LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



POEMS OF TWO WORLDS 



BY 



REV. tV'HEMPSTEAD. 




NEW YORK: 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH AND CO. 

38 West Twenty-Third Street. 






CopyrigJit, 1889, 
Bv Anson D. F. Randolph and Co. 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



TO 

JHg jpaitijfiil ©atigijtct 
JULIA, 

WHO HAS TENDED ME THROUGH MY LONG 
AND PAINFUL DECLINE, 

These Poems are Affectionately Dedicated, 

BY HER FATHER. 
Fairblry, III., June, 1886. 



PREFACE. 



1\ /r ANY of these poems were published in religious 
newspapers while their author was still living ; 
others are now printed for the first time. They reveal 
a deeply poetic spirit, in closest touch with Nature, and 
finding in her a refuge fiom the importunity of the 
deepest problems with which the soul of man has to 
do. It cannot be said that these poems are the utter- 
ances of the modern spirit ; in form they belong to a 
past generation, but the thought and the feeling which 
animate them will never be out of date. 

L. S. H. 

New York, 

Nov. 22, 1889. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAaE 

Preface iii 

Through the Swamp . 7 

The South Wind 21 

Carmen Vernum 27 

The Northern March 31 

Elna 34 

Two Lives . . 37 

Sermons in Leaves . . 41 

Toward Sunset 46 

June 50 

In Praise of Death 54 

Sunny Lands 59 

Among the Gods 62 

By the Susquehanna 69 

John's Passing World 72 

Midsummer 78 

The Fall Cricket 80 

A Dream of the Blessed Dead 83 

Baalbec . . . 91 

Getting On 96 



yi CONTENTS. 

Page 

The World of Spirits 98 

Passed Out or Sight 101 

An Elegy 101 

Near the Sea 109 

The Sun 112 

Beyond 11<'> 

The Storm King 118 

Awaking 124 

The Still, Tremendous Night 127 

A Solemn Music Flowing 129 

At Watch Hill . 131 

lo P^an 136 

The Camping Ground . . . . • 138 

The Christian Argument 142 



POEMS. 



THROUGH THE SWAMP. 

NO path is here, but I will struggle on, 
For I must dip beneath these sylvan glooms, 
And ere the sun, descending, fires the fringe 
Of hairy pines that blacken yonder ridge. 
Pick my rude, winding, solitary way 
Through stony dells and wilds whose every foot 
Is sharp with tangled lycopodium stems. 
Sweet with the breath of birch and wintergreen, 
And wrapped in shadows falling broad and cool 
From canopies of tall Canadian fir. 

Still, sombre, sunk between three savage hills 
Whose sides are rough with rocks and blasted pines, 
And thick with mouldering stumps and bramble rows 
It lies, in solitude and verdure drowned. 
Now I essay the wild descent. Behold 
The spot I sought, — the silent, flowery swamp ! 



8 ■ THROUGH THE SWAMP. 

Huge trunks, extended on the surface, rot 
Where'er I turn, each in its quaking bed 
Of sodden ferns, decaying leaves, and moss. 
Fantastically round me near and far 
The prostrate giants lie ; some by the root 
Upturned, some at the base snapped short, and some 
As if by careful hands laid side by side ; 
Some crosswise and in strange confusion hurled, 
Split, twisted, tilted, half in air and half 
In mire, as if in years long dead the storm, 
Passing, in sport had seized them by the tops 
And whirled them headlong through the troubled 

air, 
Then dropped on this green, lone morass, — their grave. 
Here they have lain so long, the slow-paced years 
That on their frames have sifted the white snows, 
Show^ered the sweet rains and shed the early dews, 
Are scarcely equalled by the leaves they wore. 
Great names have risen and blazed across the heavens 
And dropped like dying stars behind the hills ; 
Proud cities, street by street, and league by league 
Of temple, park, dome, spire, and wharf and bale, 
Up from the marsh and w^ilderness have sprung ; 
Great armies have stood face to face, and dashed 
The hills with blood, and rent the air with moans 
And cries, and drowned the heavens in cannon-smoke, 
Since these dead giants with a mighty groan, 
A hollow, vast, foreboding wail, unheard 



THROUGH THE SWAMP. 

Save b}^ the listening deer and hungry wolf, 
Sank to their graves amid these leafy wilds. 

What wonders of the holy threefold realm 
Of Nature meet my gaze at every turn ! 
Far o'er the level stretch of ooze, thick-ridged 
With boles of Titan hemlock overthrown. 
That in the winds and rains dissolving, sink 
Lower, lower into their black and welterino- sjraves. 
Glistens the plumy mantle of the moss. 

Knee-deep among its luminous silken folds 
Dropping, I feel as one who walks the air ; 
Under my sinking feet the dense, gold-green, 
Long, labyrinthine tangles give no sound ; 
So tended, clothed, so steeped in glorious life. 
Clinging, ascending, falling with its sheer 
Splendor of growth and verdure, divine moss 1 
What monarch ever folded empty hands 
Across his breast for that last awful sleep 
In richer pomp, or wrapped in fairer shroud 
Than that which folds these fallen forest kings ? 

Onward beneath the interlocking boughs. 
Climbing with steep, slow steps o'er mouldering trees. 
Here stretched while generations of my race 
From dust have sprung and fallen back to dust. 
Or making their green, giant length a bridge 



10 THROUGH THE SWAMP. 

To bear me safe o'er depths of quaking mire 
Into the twilight of the hoary woods, 
The marvellous life and mystery I press. 
Why this new fire in every vein, this swift, 
Strange quickening of the pulses of my heart ? 
No danger threatens here, no tempest lowers. 
No wild beast crouches, and no serpent coils ; 
Not this it is, nor that my eye is drawn 
By some bewildering floral miracle 
Fairer than all that I have seen or dreamed, — 
Not this the spur that pricks my languid blood 
To such a happy tumult through my veins. 
But the mysterious spell that Nature lays 
On him who treads her sacred courts aright, 
And hears her solemn voice in reverence. 

Yet here with coarser plants and common blooms 
God, in the impartial riches of his love, 
Has sown the wilds. By every glassy pool. 
And every sliding current's crystal brim. 
The pinxter-flower and water-avens watch. 
Through the green length of May's- delicious reign, 
Their faces in the watery mirror glow ; 
And that rank weed, the rough swamp saxifrage, 
Makes all the circuit bristle with its wands 
Of dull-green flowers. The spicy wintergreen, 
Unsought of children, glistens here, and hangs 
Its scarlet fruit just o^er the water's edge ; 



THROUGH THE SWAMP. 11 

While all around, farther than eye can range, 
Along the noonday twilight's level dusk 
The tall wood-violet's million purple eyes 
Kindle the shadows with their human smile. 

But other plants have lured my feet to rove 
This still, sequestered scene, my eye to search 
With more than lover's eagerness the sweet, 
Deep secret of these cool, enchanted shades ; 
For one whose faded cheek can w^ear no more 
The rose that blossomed there in other days 
Tells me that sixty long, sad years ago 
She in her dreaming girlhood passed this w^ay 
At noon or morn, or when the summer woods 
Stood up to take the sun's expiring beam. 
And saw that weird, inflated forest flower, 
The yellow lady's-slipper, shining here. 
I turn, and lo ! two lady's-slippers fair, — 
Two dainty orchis-blossoms clad in gold, 
Together set so near that their smooth leaves 
Have touched and interlocked like two white arms 
Of two fair girls each round the waist of each. 
Oh, it is worth a weary walk o'er steep 
And barren hills, scorched by a summer's sun, 
To live an hour beneath these flickering glooms 
And look upon so sweet and fresh a sight ! 

But Nature in her lone recesses rears 
Another wilding, fair and strangely formed. 



12 THROUGH THE SWAMP. 

That I would gladly see, but find it not. 

Deep-purple is the flower, and one curved edge 

Of the long leaf is folded round to join 

The other, making a large hollow where 

The rains that from the dun, cool clouds descend 

Drop after drop are hoarded up and lie 

Shut in an urn greener than emerald. 

So those who tracked the deer and roved the woods 

For simples, when they saw this curious plant 

Lifting its hooded cup above the bog, 

Gave it the homely name of pitcher-plant. 

Onward beneath the interlacing boughs, 
Into the noonday dusk, the mystery. 
The musky shades, I press. At every step 
The stillness deepens round me more and more ; 
For, save the muffled beating of my heart. 
Or lone infrequent call of some strange bird 
High perched amid the dark of many leaves. 
No whisper mars the silence of the place. 

Thickly as maize-hills in the furrowed field, 
Before, around me, little islands rise. 
Of woven roots and mouldered leaves and stems 
That rest or float upon the shuddering ooze ; 
Daintily, dewily from each sheeny tuft 
Gushes a pale blue fire of violets, 
With plume and breath of fern and trail of vine ; 



THROUGH THE SWAMP. 13 

I pass from crest to crest ; sometimes a leap 

Must bear me clear o'er intervening mire 

To firmer soil. Oh, as my feet descend 

Upon the nearest tuft, a whole bright world 

Of beauty is extinguished at a breath ! 

A little universe of symmetry, 

Power, mystery, and divinest handiwork, 

Cells, walls, tubes, pores, and hair- like, wandering veins 

Crossing, recrossing, palmate, penniform, 

Wonderful ; streams, pools, and whirling vortices 

Of limpid, silent- flowing emerald. 

Clear-running pearl and liquid chrysolite. 

Where Nature, patient, tender, wise, withdrawn. 

Distils her subtle balms and living hues, — 

All at my feet a formless ruin lie. 

rapture of the dim and solemn woods ! 
calms that fold all seen and outward things, — 
Leaves, waters, air ! sweeter inward calms, 
That to my being's inmost part go down * 

Until I seem to walk the deathless groves,. 
And hear the murmur of the immortal streams, 
And all the happy laughter of a world 
That never heard a groan or held a grave ! — 
Was that the sudden gleam and float of robes 
Of Dryads, Hamadryads, flitting past ? 
Or that the flow of Pan's gray, hircine beard 
Flung out a moment on the dusky air, , 



14 THROUGH THE SWAMP, 

AVhile he in haste slid like a pallid star 
Behind the covert of that mossy pine ? 

As I beneath this broad cathedral stand, 
With these sweet, innocent children of the shades. 
Wild-flowers, new leaves, and finely fronded ferns. 
And one pervading, mystic, endless hymn 
(Unwritten, and by outward ear unheard) 
Sent up from every leaf and thread of moss, 
The thoughts that in me rise are strange and sad. 
I feel as if a solemn, sighing wind 
Ean, and a thousand years had run and sighed. 
Across a hollow land where no man goes, 
And nothing lives save roses red and white. 
And sweet and beautiful as dews e'er fed. 
Or wdnds of summer plundered as they passed, — 
All sending down rank roots into a grave, 
And kindling with their smile a land of graves. 

The winged years from man have taken much, 
The winged years perhaps have given more, 
Since that far age when men in groves and streams, 
And waves that broke along the lonely shore. 
Saw more than the inert, familiar forms 
Of Nature, — shadows, rocks, trees, hills, and flowers. 
Shapes to be feared, appeased, bright, deathless, swift 
And strong, of finer essence, nobler mould, 
Glanced through the quivering shadows of the wood, 



THROUGH THE SWAMP. 15 

Peopled the caves and hollows of the hills. 
And windy spaces of the sea and air, — 
Nymphs of the oak, the grotto, and the fount, 
Whose locks and limbs, bathed in a rosy light, 
Eivalled the fairest forms of earth, and vied 
With her who in her glorious beauty sprang 
Perfect from out the green sea's blowing foam. 
Then oft at morn or dead of night, or when 
The sun, descending, bathed in flowing gold 
The mountain ridges, clouds, and leaping waves, 
From wooded hills and solitary shores 
Floated melodious voices, harpings wild 
And strangely sweet, such as no earthly harp 
Hath flung to any breeze, or earthly flute 
Hid in the secret of its golden cells. 

With bloody brow, and wounds in foot, in hand 
And side, such as no mortal flesh had borne, 
And a strange light kindling his placid eye, 
Which seemed to say, " Though none have been so poor, 
So lonely and rejected, scorned and bruised, 
Yet, yet the lands and all the sea are mine," 
The Nazarene came by and passed from sight. 
No more the vales, the streams, the lapping waves, 
Mountains and waving groves and caverns dim 
Glanced with the feet and echoed with the songs 
Of forms surpassing human. Prayer went up, 
And temples rose to him in all the land ; 



16 THROUGH THE SWAMP. 

In all the land the temples of the gods 

Grew silent and were not. The serpent crawled 

Along the marble floors, and loathsome bats 

Hung theh^ huge clusters from the rotting domes. 

Luther, Columbus, and Copernicus 

Came ; came the compass, cannon, printing-press ; 

Men saw in stately woods and whispering groves 

No more a scene thronged by ethereal shapes, 

Dian, or Pan, or Dryad of the oak. 

But trees, trees only, waiting for the saw 

Whose flying teeth should change their lordly trunks 

To merchantable stuff, beam, plank, and lath, — 

The only wise and noble use of trees. 

The flashing mill-wheel scared the water-nymph 
From the clear pools of her beloved stream ; 
Huge banks of sawdust choked its crystal course ; 
The stately pines, that saw its sources leap 
Clear from the snowy mountain's cloven walls. 
Were cut away. The silver-sided trout, 
That through the dimpling eddies slipped, or lurked 
Beneath the twisted roots of willow, larch. 
Alder, or leaning fir, or spreading beech. 
Died in its place, or, driven to other haunts. 
Held a brief, trembling term, and was extinct. 
So passed the beauteous dwellers of the stream, 
So went the mystic haunters of the wood. 
Meadow and mountain, wave and grotto dim ; 



THROUGH THE SWAMP. 17 

Dryad and oread, satyr, sylph, and faun 
Passed into silence as a dream, a sound. 
But lust and greed and war and doubt remained. 
Dead was the mighty Pan ; the Nazarene, 
With Mammon his arch-enemy, survived. 
Naiad and fairy, troll and ghost and ghoul 
Have perished. The Philistine lives to blab, 
Lie, pilfer, hoard, and laugh at hell and heaven. 

Deeper into the folding shades ; and lo ! 
A thing of more than earthly loveliness ; 
A glory lighting up the verdant gloom ; 
An object too divinely beautiful 
Ever to perish out of memory 
Through endless trains of years, whether in this 
Or some more fair and ample world that floats 
In God's remotest brotherhood of stars ; 
To haunt me, to waylay, become a part 
Of all that I must suffer, be, and feel ; 
A never silent music in my soul ; 
A rose that will not perish from the land. 
A little stream flows on without a sound 
Or ripple, save where darts the golden trout 
On the incautious prey, crossed here and there 
By lengths of greenest moss upborne on roots 
Of alder, hemlock, fern, and murmurous pine, — 
Bridges of braided chrysoprase that stretch 
From brink to fringy brink, unbroken, soft, 



18 THROUGH THE SWAMP. 

As down from breast of any bird God made 
To cleave the Tropic or the Arctic wave. 
And underneath, the clear, cool water slides. 
With little calms, dissolving whirls and glows, 
Pellucid, restful, lustrous, dark, and still, 
As the unwrinkled ocean of the night. 
When half her silver galleons float out 
To glitter, moored upon that windless sea. 

O kingly columns ! Arches broad and vast ! 
Transparent leaves through which the sunshine throbs ! 
velvet floor inlaid with blue and gold ! 
Borne on the smooth, still pulses of the air, 
Your verdure slides into my blood and brain, 
Till I forget the blustering, bartering world 
That just beyond these limits calls and raves. 
To walk these purple aisles not made with hands ; 
To tread this carpet, fragrant, soft as wool. 
With heavy heart that seeks a little rest. 
And lift my eyes to where these meeting boughs 
Build their cool Paradise of shade and bloom ; 
To part, with pollen-sprinkled feet, these knots 
Of trilliums whose falling, lurid eyes 
Give me glad welcome to their dusky haunts ; 
To see how thoughtful, fresh, and happy seem 
The huddled ferns that fringe these little knolls 
And islets green afloat on the morass ; 
To watch these large, dull-purple avens-blooms 



THROUGH THE SWAMP. 19 

Watching their faces in the water's face, 

To me is deeper joy and ampler hfe 

Than power, success, the city's noise and glare. 

And all that riches, fame, and traffic give. 

Not that earth's sensuous, ever-fading forms. 

Woods, waters, shadows, hues, alone can please ; 

But these have power to call around me forms 

Unseen, — hues, hills, groves, splendors, powers, a world 

To which the world I walk is but a veil, 

A broken image, a reflection dim. 

And now, to woods, shades, verdure, dreams, farewell ! 
I have not seen the miracle I would. 
But I have heard the beating of my heart 
Amid the stillness of the mingling boughs. 
I little hope that I shall live or think, — 
That any woman, man, or gentle child 
Will live or think again when death has spread 
His ice-cold hand upon the eye, and closed 
The lids, and stilled the beating of the heart ; 
But I all day, along these silent shades. 
Have heard sweet voices calling, calling me. 
And felt invisible footsteps following me, 
Too light to bend the slenderest spire of moss. 
My lost, sad childhood I have lived again. 
Clasped hands that in the flesh we clasp no more. 
Looked in some lovely faces, some dear eyes, 



20 THROUGH THE SWAMP. 

That now are dust beneath a mound of dust ;• 
And o'er this mossy carpet, golden-green, 
Betwixt the upper green and lower gold, 
And flower and fern-plume bending, I have heard 
The feet of God move down these solemn shades. 



THE SOUTH WIND. 

A LITTLE while, and here, 
-^^^ "Where I, crowned with a deathless sorrow, stand, 
Facing the cold, dun clouds and naked land, 

The gray puccoon will rear 

Its head of burnished gold ; 
Spring all its splendid miracle renew, 
And quickened blades upward in silence through 

Brown leaves and loosened mould 

Push to the light. Here God 
Will prove his sleepless care and wondrous power 
In warming death to life, and moulding flower 

From lifeless dust and clod. 

Among these wakening boughs 
The glad South Wind will run with sound of palms, 
Murmur of woods that drink the golden calms 

Of the deep Cuban hills, 

Or dash of Orizaba's snow-cold rills. 
Oh, that light spirit of the air will bring 
In his gay train each happy, smiling thing, — 

Star-flowers whose timid beauty fills 

The cool wood-alleys dim ; 

Anemones that from the brim 



2 THE SOUTH WIND. 

Of prattling brooks lean pensively. 
Their faces in the quiet pool to see ; 

Wood-violets that swim 

And tremble in the light 
And shadow of their maiden loveliness ; 
Grass for the field, songs for the wilderness, — 

All life's delicious fire and might 
Clothed in sweet waters, million-colored hues, 
Quick-glancing wings, young leaves, and trembling dews. 

Breath of the lavish Spring, 
Come, bring its full-blown glory to the tree ; 
Joy, motion, splendor of grass and hum of bee, — 

One face thou canst not bring ! 

In the last year that died 
(He saw her die), in years that are no more, 
In long bright summers that are briglit no more, 

That face smiled at my side. 

It looked on these wide plains 
In joy supreme. The endless reach of green, 
The warmth, the breadth and glory of the scene. 

The great wind of the prairie solemnly 

Blowing, the rest and rapture of the sky 
Were heaven begun in all her glowing veins. 

To that clear, quiet eye 
This was a lovely world. These mournful pines, 
And branching orchard rows, and trailing vines, 



THE SOUTH WIND. 23 

Were more than trees and vines ; 

Voices, beckoning gleams 
Were they, from that Green Land, fore-reaching dreams 
Too fair in death, lost, unredeemed to lie. 

The gentle birds that sung 

The apple-boughs among, 
And loved the vines that crept above the door. 

Than happy birds were more, — 

Vistas through which she saw 
The breadth and length of Love's eternal law. 

The still September days 
Streamed out along the world ; she turned away. 
Through what wild night up to what tranquil day 

The road she travelled lay, 
I could not tell. See how these maples blaze ! 
With cheerful words and radiant face among 
Their shades she moved ; their rustle and their bloom. 
Does she remember, know how deep a gloom 

Her dying round us flung ? 

Is that strange world which she 
Has reached, so beautiful, so rich in bliss. 
So bright beyond the brightest hues of this, 

So sweet to hear and see, 

That like a ripened leaf 
Earth with its flowers of joy and fires of grief 

Drops out of memory. 

And she no more, no more 



24 THE SOUTH WIND. 

Heeds or remembers all the season brings, — 
Song, fragrance, blossom, flash and flight of wings, ■ 

Walking that mystic shore ? 

Or will she say to those 
Who round her smile, On my forsaken home 
Now hreaks the tender grass, noiv joansies hloom, 

And now the rose ? 

Will no one tell me clear 
Above all guesses, dreams, where walk our dead. 
Who left the world so bare when forth they sped ? 
God, and thou meek, much-suffering Christ, I fear, 

Tremble and fear. 

Lest when with fluttering breath 

Man drops into the hollow gulf of death. 
He will not feel or weep, 

Eemember, wince with pain. 

Dream, love, or hate again, 
But with sealed eyelids fall upon a sleep 

As hell's foundations deep. 

Justice is good, and good it is to hold 
The truth, and walk in charity with all ; 
But when at last the long, dark night shall fall, 
And at the door winds puff the sable pall, 

And a sullen bell is tolled, 
And the white roses on the coflin glowing 
Fresh as if still upon the trellis blowing, 



THE SOUTH WIND, 25 

Diffuse a smell of mould, 

Then help us, God, and thou 

That dost his Word expound ! 

Where in those frozen wastes profound, 
On what lone world 
In yonder blue, through frost and silence whirled, 

Lieth the spirit's goal ? 
What clime is there to hold the absent soul, 

Thought, feeling, memory, now 
That ice is on the heart and dust is on the brow ? 

We know in part ; still for the truth we grope ; 

Fool me with no fond hope 
Born of the wish that when I close my eyes 
On earth I quit a dungeon for the skies ; 
No vision of a sensuous, golden heaven, 
To John amid those seven thunders given, 
With endless waving of the victor palm, 
And sound of endless psalm, 
From Doubt's fierce bitterness can free, 
Or lay the torturing fear. 
Our ears, though dull, can hear. 
Too near, too near, as noise of battle clear, 
The w^arning of the sea. 
The wail and ceaseless moaning of the sea. 
That chafes and gnaws the small, volcanic isle 

Whereon we sweat and toil, 
Trying between the snow and rain to smile; 



26 THE SOUTH WIND. 

Sowing in tears the grain 
We reap in infinite pain, 
Till the cold sea creeps up, and we go down. 
In the black waves to drown. 

But thou, Wind of the South, 
Lead on thy birds and bloom, — oh happy train ! 
Clear over icy hill and desert plain 

Blow, blow with odorous mouth. 

Hushed lips, dust-covered eyes 
Are not for thee. Sing, strew the world with flowers, 

And with thy odorous breath 

Breathe not one hint of death. 

From Southern seas and sunny lands 

Come with full-lilied hands 
And lean above these graves. Bring violets, showers 
Of silver fall, till these dead clods arise 
In grassy wilds and groves and forest bowers 

Hued like the sun and skies. 



CAEMEN VERNUM. 

A JOY, a silvery trouble in the air, 
Songs dizzy with love's swift and potent wine. 
Reel from the elm ; I have seen flashing wings 
This vernal morning. 

The moan you misdeemed thunder was a wail 
Of ice, whirled, routed, scattered by the sun 
And God's warm wind, chased down from Baffin's Bay ; 
Ice on the granite tusks of Labrador 
Writhing and yelling. 

You think He works no more by miracle, — 
Three paces distant gleams that lusty drift, 
And here this crocus. Of the time to wake 
What lips have told it ? 

Who knows ? What can we know save forms and hues ? 
Who tells what footsteps round us fall unheard ? 
Who guesses to what wondrous lands may stretch 
Behind these shadows ? 



28 CARMEN VERNUM. 

The air, the groves, the ground, are full of tongues, 
A call of breeze to stream, of beam to bud, 
Of bkd to flashing bird, and bough to bough, 
Wake, my beloved ! 

Past is^ the winter, over is the rain, 
The rain is past and over ; on the earth 
The flowers appear; her robe from hem to hem 
With stars is spangled. 

The fig-tree putteth forth her tender leaves, 
The budding vines diffuse a goodly smell. 
My fair one, haste away ; come is the time 
Of singing birds : through all the land is heard 
The voice of turtles ! 

So sang the Bard of old ; so sing the birds ; 
The crystal blood of every spreading tree 
To that delicious music swells and mounts. 
The brooks will sing it when our lips are dumb, 
The boughs repeat it when we cannot hear ; 
The grass will wave, the dandelion blow. 
When we are not remembered any more 
Than the poor hands that piled the Pyramids. 
Shall we awake ? Will the long night roll off. 
The clouds blow over? 

A thousand trees on every golden hill, 
A thousand buds on every budding tree, 



CARMEN VERNUM. 29 

As many Imman homes as buds of trees, 
For number like the army of the leaves. 
The years flow on. At any point in all 
Two cold feet sliding down. Oh, are you sure 
The "Father" heedeth? 

Give me earth's pleasant things until the end, — 
Shades, dews and groves, and violets that turn 
Sweet human eyes to mine in lonely ways, 
With winds in swinging pines. Is this the Night ? 
Will it be long, does any know how long 
And cold, till morning ? 

We all must go to sleep. When we have slept 
Long, long, shall we awake ? And when we wake, 
With other lilies, mountains, streams, and groves. 
Fairer than earthly, oh, but like, so like. 
Will He surprise us ? 

There stands a hill beyond the river, black 
From base to top with tall, majestic firs, — 
A maze through which the sun would fail to shoot 
His finest arrow. 

A temple fairer than the Hebrew Bard 
Builded of old the fragrant summit crowns ; 
With pale wood -lilies shines the leafy floor, 
And orchis wands shot up from two round leaves 
Of glistening satin. 



30 CARMEN VERNUM. 

Strong, shapely columns prop the whispering roof, 
Green, broad, and cool that roof above them spreads ; 
Oh the sweet calms, the silence and the dreams, 
The wandering odors ! 

As soon as June comes forth with beams and dews 
To feed her happy roses, I shall climb 
Into that stately temple ; from its courts 
No cares can hold me. 

For some sweet friends have I that wait me there, — 
Viburnum, kalmia, corydalis. 
Uncurling ferns and sanguine trilliums, 
With foreheads downcast. 

There too will pass the Master Builder great, 
Upon his children smiling. Him shall I 
Beneath the cool and lofty arches hear 
At noonday walking. 



THE NORTHEEN MARCH. 

FORTH from the portals of the ruddy east 
Thou comest, wild of eye and strong of limb ; 
Along the frozen hills 
Sharp clangs thy iron mail. 

Thou bringest neither leaf nor plumy fern ; 
No young rose nestles in thy streaming hair ; 

Around thy ringing feet 

No tender blossom springs. 

Yet beauty walks with thee, bleak, boisterous month ; 
Stiff are thy robes with gems, hale are thy cheeks ; 

Down the cold northern blast 

Far streams thy pearly beard. 

Thou callest back the bluebird to his cell. 

The same from which his last-year's fledglings cried ; 

His silvery note makes glad 

The groves and faded vales. 



32 THE NORTHERN MARCH. 

All day I rove the brown, deserted fields 
Still striped with gleaming drifts ; in vain I seek 
By bank or sheltered nook 
A wind-flower's tremulous eye. 

I climb the windy hill. High overhead 
The hoary hemlocks toss their giant boughs ; 
Down from their rigid arms 
Descends the long, gray moss, 

And on thy blast floats like a hermit's beard, 
Streams like a pennon down the gusty gloom. 

Myriads of shrivelled cones 

Of fir and spreading burrs 

Of beech bestrew the slowly dwindling drifts. 
Here runs the rabbit's tangled path, and here 

The sharper, straighter trail 

Of grouse or stealthy fox. 

High perched among thy swinging boughs the jay 
Screams his harsh battle-challenge far around — 
The gaudy, clanging jay, 
Whose savage trumpet-call 

Pierces the sultry Venezuelian calms 

No less than tamarack swamps of Canada. 

See, from a doorway round. 

Set in that blasted pine. 



THE NORTHERN MARCH. 33 

A whiskered face and two large, lustrous eyes, 
Where the red squirrel, sprightliest of his kind, 

Builds from the wintry blast 

A covert safe and warm ; 

But when the mild and sunny days come round, 
He flashes from his comfortable home. 

And forth from tree to tree 

Shoots like a dusky fire. 

Along the waste of lingering, lessening snows, 

A wilderness of columns, tall, superb, 
The spouted maples rise, 
Their veins with honey crammed. 

From base to top a slow blue vapor climbs. 
Curling about thy stalwart limbs, March, 

From where, in simmering pans. 

Bubbles the nectar brown. 

I hear the ringing axe ; a sound goes by 
Of children's merriment, a laugh of yoiiths 

And maidens in whose hearts 

The violets are up. 

And faith beyond these snows and lowering skies 
Can look with unobstructed eye and see 

The flush of orchard rows, 

The waving of the corn. 



ELNA. 

MANY, oh, many times the boughs have clothed 
Themselves with leaves, and these into their graves 
Have dropped. The frost, the waves, the rattling storms 
In everlasting war have worn the rocks. 
And changed the confines of the hoary sea ; 
The hum of mighty thoroughfares, the din 
Of battle have gone up, the rains have rushed 
Into the rivers ; these have sent their brown, 
Fast-rolling volume roaring to the deep. 
Thence to ascend, to rise, to fall in dews 
And fruitful rains along the thirsty hills. 

Through all, ah me ! do I remember well 
That pale, cold forehead, and that rigid form 
Dressed for the burial. I since then have otowu 
Gray-headed, lonely, sad. With faltering steps 
My feet draw near the fearful boundary 
Which separates these rivers, hills, and skies 
From that Unseen wdiich is a dread to all. 
But home to thee, — thy everlasting home. 



ELNA. 35 

O unintelligible Spirit World ! 

Creation of man's weak, ghost-peopled brain, 

Or real, tangible as this grass, these herds. 

These fluttering snow-flakes or this shaggy glen 

Through which the wild, white waters thunder down ! 

God only knows how far away, how near 

Above our heads, around our daily walks, 

Its valleys bloom, its mountains tower, its boughs 

Hang fair in fruitage. There thou dwellest ; thou 

Hast walked those hills and watched those placid streams 

And breathed those airs so many, many years, 

If airs and streams and hills may be where form 

Is not, nor sense nor matter clog the soul. 

Of all that earth before her children lays 
To charm them into love of her sweet face, 
Springtime and verdure and autumnal hues. 
Unfolding leaves, dews, blossoms of the field, 
Thou didst grow weary, — weary of thy books, 
I*rattle and glance of waters, song of birds. 
Sunset and morning ; oh, tired, tired of all, — 
The streams^ the grass, the flowers, the human face ; 
So thou didst fold thy hands and turn away. 
With that sweet morning light upon thy hair. 

Within the walls of that mysterious clime 
Has God set windows looking toward the earth, 
Through which thy clearer eye and quicker ear 



36 ELNA. 

May catch a gleam, a sound of that sad world 
Buried in snows and gloom of rolling clouds, 
Which gave thee breath and holds thy ashes now ? 

The long still summers of the Spirit Land ! 

The joy, the wonder, and the mystery ! 

To what unutterable heights hast thou 

Climbed from this fog and dust, these clouds and graves ? 

Has not that purer light ensphered thy head 

In splendors for my vision too intense, 

And drawn into thine eyes from all the hours 

Such starry majesties and awful calms 

That I should fear to meet thy altered gaze ? 

Oh, once well known on earth, remembered still, 

Inexplicable now to me, I ask 

What groves around thee murmur, to what stars 

Dost thou lift up thy forehead, while to-night. 

This night of gathering drifts and howling winds. 

Earth seems one desolation, and the snow 

Folds its white mantle round thy lonely grave ? 



TWO LIVES. 

ASTOEY of two lives, both sad, one swift 
To death as any rose that from its stem 
Falls while the dews of Jane are on its heart ; 
The like of which earth has its multitudes. 
That come like leaves or roses, fade and fall 
Into their graves, and all the birds sing on. 

He was a flaxen-haired and ruddy boy ; 
She loved him with the love that mothers know, 
And toiled to shield him from the chilling frosts 
That fell with autumn, and the savage winds 
That whirled the stinging snows along the hills 
And piled them in the hollows. She was poor ; 
And when the fever rose and flushed his cheek, 
And he upon his pillow turned and moaned 
All night, she watched beside him till the dawn 
Eeddened the east, and she could hear the tread 
Of those who hastened to their daily tasks. 
And when he grew to be a rosy lad, 
Foremost in every sport to boyhood dear, 



38 TWO LIVES. 

Or when beside the brook whose whirling pools 
Held the shy, sparkling, eager trout he roved, 
Or when, with gun across his shoulder laid, 
He climbed the rocky hills and felt his blood 
Leap to the sounding trumpet of the pines, 
Her watchful heart ran after him untired. 

So in the holy shadow of that love 
He rose to man's estate, and still he wore 
That smile and rosy look, his eye unchanged, 
Blue as the dome that glowed above his head. 
Then his light locks took on a darker tinge, 
And in him woke that sad, delicious fire 
Which burns in every bosom once in life. 
He loved another, and, in turn beloved. 
Was to that other joined till mighty Death 
Should rend that holiest earthly bond away. 

Then came the end. Oh, bitter, bitter end ! 
For when the days had grown into the months, 
And these had rolled into the rounded year. 
One called him at whose summons all must bow. 
Life dropped the thread. They came and bore away 
The useless thing from which the soul had looked 
To see the rain and pleasant sunshine swell 
The buds of twenty springtimes. He was gone. 
And she who watched his budding infancy 
And ripening youth with that maternal pride 



TWO LIVES. 89 

And sleepless care which all men seeing, praise, 
Never forgets those eyes, that step, — oh when 
Do mothers' hearts forget their early dead ? — 
And you may see her sitting mute and long, 
With that great sorrow in her large brown eyes. 
She sees men come and go, the golden-rod 
Droop by the ragged wall, along the brook 
The aster's purple torch flare in the wind. 
And the bright goldfinch silently despoil 
The thistle's downy ball until the fir 
Pushes its cool, sharp shadow to her feet, 
And the weird bat shakes out his leathern wings. 
To look in her sad eyes the neighbors come ; 
He never comes ; him she will see no more 
Until she walks that other, vaster world, 
Where, waking, some will see as they are seen. 
And where, her heart has told her, God will solve 
Some problems men have vainly prayed and toiled 
Through ages long and dark to render plain ; 
Where never grave is hollowed, never bell 
Is tolled, or night falls on the happy hills. 
So steals away that sad and wounded life 
Nursing a voiceless pain ; a lonely brook 
That down some verdureless autumnal vale. 
Sending a dreamy and complaining voice 
Up to the songless hills and wandering winds. 
Over half-buried trunks and choking leaves. 
Slides to its grave in the ingulfing sea ; 



40 TWO LIVES. 

A mystery, a baffled, mournful thing, 
And yet significant, of heart-break full ; 
A lesson sent of God to all who see. 
Because it holds the type of half the lives 
That come and flit across this bright, sad world 
As purposeless as shadows of the clouds 
Eun from the wind across the summer fields. 
Or flowers abortive fall from orchard boughs. 



A 



SEEMONS IN LEAVES. 



FITFUL sigh, a breath of fading groves 



And dying flowers, a voice of sobbing brooks, 
Moves up the pensive vale and perishes 
Above the pines that guard those weedy graves. 
The leaves come trembling down ; the sun pours forth 
His bounteous smile along the ripened fields. 
Far-shining hills, and many-colored vales : 
Not Solomon in all his pomp of gold. 
And costly cedar sweet from Lebanon, 
Shone as this Northern World in these, its robes 
Of ruby, amethyst, and almandine. 
It is as if I saw the gates and walls 
Of that unutterable, royal thing, 
The New Jerusalem, coming down from God. 
But as I muse, a wintry shadow creeps 
Across the land. The sun in heaven withdraws 
The wealth and sweetness of his kindly smile, 
A chilly twilight settles round my heart. 
You ask me why. Behold my answer. Here 
Is evidence, to me invincible. 
That God displays his love and wondrous skill 
On things that last a day, an hour, then drop 



42 SERMONS IN LEAVES. 

In blank annihilation. These bright leaves 

That flutter down to rot in miry graves, 

How exquisitely he has fashioned them ! 

These cells minute which man's unaided eye 

Marks not, so matched, harmonious, compact. 

Their number infinite, each a little sea 

Of pale-green liquid on whose noiseless tides 

The primogenial, protoplastic germs 

Flow in an endless circuit round and round, — 

What human skill e'er wrought so wondrously ? 

God's beauteous weeds, the lilies of the field, 

See how they grow ; they toil not, neither spin, 

And yet I say to you that Solomon 

Was not arrayed so gloriously as these ; 

Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass wdiich is 

To-day, to-morrow in the oven glows. 

Will He not clothe you, ye of little faith ? 

So runs the marvellous lesson of the Christ ; 

It hath two sides, — one, turned to us, is strength 

And sweetness ; but the other runneth thus : 

If God so clothe the lilies of the field 

To burn them ; if he deck the flowers and leaves 

To match the sunset cloud and summer bow. 

Then blasts and tramples into dirt and mire ; 

If God so paint the rose, build cell on cell 

Alive, compact, in order wonderful, 

To pile the shapely trunk, oak, cedar, pine, 



SERMONS IN LEAVES. 43 

Only to blow them forth as sand is blown, 

Then 7na7i, with his great brain and seeing eye, 

That can the stars as in a balance weigh, 

May not he die, perish that mighty brain, 

Die, vanish as the lily and the grass 

Blown by God's careless breath around the world ? 

So speak the dying lilies, through His lips, 

Tivo lessons, one of hope, one of despair ; 

So leaves, that fading, falling, rustle out 

Their still, sad sermon on the baffled heart ; 

Faintly you hear it ; is it life or death ? 

With forest leaf as lily ; God paints each 

With care and power such as no painter knows, 

Then tramples them ; they die, and live no more. 

Oh, why should He work miracles like these, 

Build up a temple wrought so marvellously. 

Dome, spandrel, cyma, dental, portico. 

Arch, column with acanthus overtrailed. 

And all sweet forms, delicious curves and lines, 

Only to blow one sudden, blighting blast 

And whelm the wonder in the dust we tread ? 

We cannot tell. No answer yet, more wise, 

More sad, by any given. We cannot tell. 

Behold where floats that gorgeous butterfly ; 

God formed those brilliant wings, and painted them 

To match the rainbow and the sunset gates ; 

He sends abroad his blast ; the wonder drops 



44 SERMONS IN LEAVES. 

At once to nothingness, blank, absolute. 
May man look forward to a brighter fate, — 
Immortal man, whose body God hath shaped 
With no more forethought, love, no nicer skill 
Than the cold worm that dies beneath our feet, 
Or fine-wrought leaf or dazzling butterfly 
^That drops unnoticed to its miry grave 
To hover o'er the summer flowers no more ? 
Man's conscience, reason, large, foreseeing brain, 
You deem these raise him high above the ox 
And rank him with Immortals, make him fast 
As by a chain of gold to some unknown, 
High, inconceivably sweet Second Life ; 
Yet see how dark, fierce, faithless, profligate, 
Bloody and devilish, worse than beast is man ! 
What proof in structure, tastes, proclivities. 
Diseases, instincts, eye-glance, slavery 
Abject to drunkenness, superstition, lust. 
Organs abortive, rudimentary parts 
That point to races, tribes, and forms of life, 
Whelmed with the ages that could give them birth. 
Miles deep beneath the waves and tilted rocks, 
And in that known descent through centuries 
Of vermin, drinking-skulls, and putrid smells, 
From loins of frothing, screaming cannibals, — 
In this, and that long, howling, beastly war 
With tiger, wolf, starvation, cold, what proof 
That the Darwinian holds the field, and will ! 



SERMONS IN LEAVES. 45 

One Wasliington, a thousand Neros foul, 

With ashes, blood, and smoke of shrieking Kome ; 

One Milton, but a thousand snakes and wolves 

That hiss and howl upon the giant's track ; 

One Plato, but the countless common herd, 

With little longing in their shallow brains 

Beyond the meat that feeds their brutish blood. 

Man's arts, discoveries, cities, temples, laws. 

Grant all ; yet know the spider, ant, and bee. 

No less than man, are prime geometers. 

The birds both small and great, the giant swan, 

The tiny wren and smaller humming-bird, 

Swift through night's windy waste of dark and snow, 

A thousand leagues of v/ind and dark and snow, 

Chartless, unhelped by compass, sun, or star, 

Cleave their sure way to other homes, abodes 

Securer, milder suns and softer shades 

By lonely lake or city's social hum. 

Man's dignity ! Ah, narrow is the space 

Which the sagacious elephant, baboon. 

And dog must cross to touch the average man ! 

No ; from that undescribed, untravelled land 

What signal flames across the yawning gulf ? 

Among her myriads Nature hath no voice 

Of insect, opening bud, or wandering wind 

To fix conviction on the mind that man 

May pass one step beyond the dusty grave. 



TOWAED SUNSET. 

PLEASANT it is to see a golden sun 
Smile o'er a scene like this with tranquil eye ; 
Pleasant to feel these soft winds round me rim 
O'er the bent grass with many a tender sigh ; 
The streams that prattle down o'er root and stone 
Are cheerful sights to me that am to die, 
And turn my fading eyes 
From autumn's pomp and spring's gay ministries. 

The sure forerurmer lurks along my veins 

Of that dread hour which on all flesh must come ; 

The gray, blurred afternoon alone remains 
Of all the day that rose so fair in bloom ; 

And from the western mountains o'er the plains 
The shadows lengthen toward me, and the gloom 
That waits to fold us all 

Creeps nearer, cold and vast, — a mighty pall. 

My early days, — how like these withered leaves ! 

Some faded tints alone can 1 recall ; 
My early friends, — the wind of autumn grieves 

Above their dust, and spring's dead glories fall ; 



TOWARD SUNSET. 47 

Haunted and desolate I bring my sheaves, 

Mingled with weeds and thistles, light and small ; 
Oh, such am I that turn 
Sad-eyed to see so near my sunset burn. 

Wan is my brow with watching, seamed with care ; 

The early lightness from my step is flown ; 
The groves and waters warn me, and the air 

Is full of tongues that moan, The day is done ; 
And inward tremblings make me all aware 

That I by some swift stream am hurried on, 
Till now I hear the roar 
Of that great cataract plunging just before. 

It saddens me to think the long, long night 

Draws nearer to enshroud and stifle all 
That I have ever seen of fair and bright ; 

That I shall miss the song of birds, the call 
Of waters and young winds, and all the light 

Which the great sun from his full urn lets fall 
On this green world of leaves 
And grass, whose breast to meet his kisses heaves. 

My gentle friends that haunt the wood and streams, 
Shall I miss all upon that mystic shore ? 

Will not these wind-flowers tremble through my dreams. 
These trilliums follow through the shadowy door, 



48 TOV/ARD SUNSET. 

These kalmias haunt me with their rosy gleams, 
These ferns their subtle perfumes round me pour. 
These asters nod to me 
Across the dim irremeable sea ? 

Through that strange world beyond, the utmost stars 
All-beauteous at the feet of God may shine, 

And there the soul wash out its cruel scars 
In the clear river of the peace divine ; 

These birds and groves, scorning all earthly bars, 
Will track my steps across the mystic line, 
And the strong wind that swings 

These mountain pines chase me on mournful wings. 

Yes, these wild forest flowers, rich autumn hues, 
And silvery clouds, this wide, sweet reach of sky, 

The glorious sun whose smiles o'er all diffuse 
Beauty and strength, will leave me w^hen I die ; 

Yet thou, dear absent world, thy lilies, dews, 
Lost faces, tones, will live in memory, 
And wave and sunset throw 

Their ardors o'er the hills to which I go. 



&^ 



Though flesh must fail, it comforts me to know 
Earth's lords and demigods, her dearest, best, 

Have trod the self-same way that I must go; 
Have seen the shadows trooping to invest 



TOWARD SUNSET. 49 

The vales and mountains, seen the dark night grow 
More dark and chill ; then, mounting to their rest 
Above the fog and cold, 
Have felt the eternal calms their heads infold. 

Lo 1 half the heavens is kindling with the zone 
Of light which their ascending feet have made, — 

Great names, though often to the world unknown, 
Whose hearts were by a faith unfaltering stayed ; 

They saw the awful shadow creeping on, 

Heard death's tremendous summons undismayed, 
And now yon track of light 

Shows where the victors took their homeward flight. 



JUNE. 

TWO hours ago, — 
Vanished, yet living and immortal hours, - 
A golden cloud of music folded me ; 
It was amidst the red and growing dawn. 
While I, half dreaming, half awake, beheld 
The cool, gray, silent spaces of my room 
Become a stately wood of wondrous breadth, 
With many a lofty arch and column tall ; 
And down the arches of that stately wood. 
And round its flowering boughs and columns tall, 
And from the inmost depths of fragrant shade. 
Was such a flash and crossing of bright wings. 
And myriads of rival throats were joined 
In such a war of tangled sweetnesses. 
As none have known, not in the world of dreams. 

I w^oke, and through my open window flowed 
A wave of rapture from those winged things 
Of God which are a joy in every clime, — 
Wild birds, the singers of the groves and fields. 
The poets of the inmost gloom of woods. 



JUNE. 51 

Eising, I passed into the sea of light 

Which washed the roofs, the hills, and rocky gates 

That see the crystal Delaware creep down 

Between two walls of sloping emerald. 

The dandelions, burning through the sward, 

In a star-glory bathed the shaven lawn ; 

And streaming from the sun's exhaustless fount 

A splendor rolled upon the woods, the fields, 

Fierce, wonderful, far-blazing, passionate, 

As if the towers of that resplendent town, 

Jerusalem the Golden, Bride of Christ, 

Dissolved and scattered by a look of God, 

Should fall, a rain of jewels, on the hills, 

And load each stem and leaf and spiry blade 

With sapphire, jacinth, pearl, and quivering gold. 

A down the level lane the oriole 

Flashed like a many-colored meteor, 

To quench his orange, red, and golden fires 

In the green mystery of the flowing elm, 

Where a warm breeze from morning till the stars 

Burned through heaven's purple, musically rocked 

The cunning house that held its callow young 

With motion as of drowsy-swinging seas. 

The bobolink along the orchard whirled 
His jangling rhapsody. The rosy South 
Sent forth a gentle wind scarce palpable, — 



52 JUNE. 

So wondrous balmy, light, and sweet a wind. 
And laying on my brow so soft a touch 
That I can think that touch the kiss of one 
Who walks the Elver's farther, fairer bank. 
Once dearly loved on earth, remembered still. 
And me remembering in her better home. 

Sweet, sweet it is even with the grave so nigh, — 

Oh, sweet, though care and change will eat away 

The thinking brain, and dim all eyes, and pale 

The rosiest cheek, to walk this beauteous world 

A year, an hour ; to take the bloom and breath 

Of violets breaking through an April sod ; 

To see the morning from her ruby gates 

Lean like a watching angel o'er the world ; 

To raise our foreheads to the holy fires 

And awful pomp of stars, and know that he, 

The Sinless, while he wandered homeless here. 

Lifted those fathomless, pathetic eyes 

To Aldebaran and the Pleiades, 

Blazing that day as now ; to rove the woods 

Circled by Spring and her anemones ; 

To sleep, and dream of shores and mighty isles 

Of flowers, strange, marvellous, resplendent thing: 

That never trembled in an earthly wind, 

And never drank of earthly light or dew ; 

To dream, and then be shaken from our dreams 

By birds upon the wing, birds on the bough. 



JUNE. 53 

Birds everywhere, low, loud, dull, dazzling birds, 
And see the brave, full-breasted robin slide 
Beneath the amelanchier's snowy crown ; 
And over all that saddens, soothes, or thrills. 
To know we walk a world still dear to God ; 
That just behind this veil of light and air. 
These groves and waters, odors, sounds, and clouds, 
And this live wilderness of verdure, smiles 
That greener summer, that eternal June. 



m PKAISE or DEATH. 

LET us, in patient hope and holy fear, 
Take up our burden and rejoice for death ; 
Here we walk painfully and darkly, here 

We see not well, nor breathe untroubled breath. 
To die is not to lose the form we wear 

Amidst these fires that burn, these frosts that kill ; 
Still ours the rugged brow or features fair 

On yonder shore, — men, women, children still. 

Death is an ordered step in life, one round 

Set in the marvellous ladder we must climb 
Till we in God's great liberties are found. 

And all the warmth of that broad summer-time. 
It is not tve that die, not we that fall 

Like those autumnal flowers which frosts consume ; 
The mortal mask drops off, and that is all 

Which goes to dust, — the dust that paves the tomb. 

Shudder not at the grave, nor turn away 
From its corruption, faint and sick at heart. 

Those livid lips, that stark and ghastly clay, 
Are but the cast-off clothes of what thou art. 



IN PRAISE OF DEATH. 55 

When the grim coffin comes into the room, 

Possess thy soul ; it is the sombre door 
That opens upward through the cold and gloom 

To that long springtime, — this, and nothing more. 

When thou goest forth into the sleet and hail, 

To hear the pebbles smite that coffin-lid. 
Then shik thou not to earth, nor loudly wail ; 

Beneath that mound thou leavest nothing hid 
Save some poor faded finery of the soul, 

Which men once haply counted half divine ; 
The eyes will fill, and — let the great bell toll, 

Why shouldst thou for an empty casket pine ? 

Dread not those boundless fields of frozen space, 

Eternal glooms, and adamantine cold ; 
God bids thee not those frightful deserts face, 

Nor through their horrors seek the streets of gold. 
The world that death shall open on thine eyes 

Extends above all space and cold and frost : 
Mystic, unseen, world within world it lies 

Around our feet, by men is hourly crossed. 

We shall not see the stars that glitter here ; 

The sun that warms these hills we shall not see ; 
The moon will fade, a blind, abandoned sphere ; 

Blue overhead these skies no more will be ; 



56 IN PRAISE OF DEATH. 

These hills and groves will from our vision pass ; 

These dews, this grass, forget for us to glow ; 
But sweeter dews, a more resplendent grass, 

Clothe the mysterious vales to which we go. 

O mystery beyond all mystery ! 

To die — that Other Life — so near, so far ; 
We pass, we cast our burden down ; there we. 

Not driven, not led, but rising, living, are ; 
In death's appalling shades we sink, we wake, 

Talk with our friends, hear waters run, winds blow 
Wondering we see all things the fashion take 

Of this green world, the things and men we know. 

Fear not old age, its wrinkles dread not ; them 

With his cold lips kind Death will kiss away ; 
So, sunk in mire, or locked in stone, the gem 

That, loosed and polished, yields the purest ray. 
Bear with these trembling hands, these fading eyes 

A little while ; they are but masks that hide 
Thy unseen self, the man that never dies, 

And all that mighty world, the world untried. 

Only a little space, a few dead hours, 

Shalt thou lie bound within that cold eclipse ; 

Then he will come and touch thy slumbering powers, 
And tinge with deathless life thy poor, dumb lips. 



IN PRAISE OF DEATH. 57 

Thou slialt awake ; from prison passing, free, 
In God's bright light exultant lift thy head, 

And that short sleep and waking swift will be 
Thy wondrous resurrection from the dead. 

Yes, thou shalt sleep, — a brief and gentle sleep ; 

Then thou, if thou hast nobly walked, shalt wake 
Where those that love thee smile, and fountains leap. 

And joys untold thy soul shall captive take. 
And thou shalt look on beauty such as thou 

Hast never seen rise on thy earthly dreams ; 
Grand faces that all heaven seems melting through. 

Sweet voices, statelier groves, and clearer streams 

Will soothe thy griefs away. The willing years 

Pour thy lost youth back on thy head again, 
A deathless rose of life without the tears. 

Without the exile, dregs, and toil and pain. 
Oh, never perfume-sweetened vernal air, 

Nor mortal brow such weight of beauty wore ; 
Never were gifts so large or home so fair. 

As those that wait thee on that farther shore. 

There shalt thou meet the friend ordained for thee, 
That perfect soul missed in the twilight here ; 

Immortal love thy life and crown shall be 
In the long summer of that sinless sphere. 



58 IN PRAISE OF DEATH. 

Glory to God ! his Word is understood 

More and yet more. Heaven through earth's torpid pores 
Flows in, celestial light and heat and good; 

The angels, singing, enter at our doors ! 



SUNNY LANDS. 

OH, many a longing fond is mine for lands beyond the 
sea, 
With grander woods and larger stars, lands never seen by 

me ; 
Strange sounds come floating down the night, of winds 

that whisper low 
To woods that in the lap of one long golden summer glow. 
I sit beneath the cocoa shade and turn with restful eyes 
To other hills, — green hills from which the May-time 

never dies ; 
From hidden valleys drenched in spice keen odors seaward 

blow ; 
Along the sands, in flamy bands, the shy flamingoes go. 
Behind, the huddled mangroves rise, a densely woven wall ; 
Before, the sea's eternal moan and endless laughter call. 
What magic gifts, what fairy forms, ribbed, rosy, thorny 

things, 
Upon the long, gray, level beach, with shining hands he 

flings ! 
Curled conchs and pebbles hyaline with crimson light 

shot through. 



60 SUNNY LANDS. 

All hues of God's sweet Golden Town, Jerusalem the 

new; 
I rove where rivers broad through dark, majestic forests 

glide, 
And monstrous vines, with flowers of fire, dip down upon 

the tide ; 
A soft wind stirs the glancing crowns of peepul-tree and 

palm, 
And every air that whispers there comes heavy with the 

balm 
Born of some tangled jasmine bower withdrawn amid the 

green 
Eedundant life of fadeless woods where man was never 

seen. 
Oh, hateful is the land of frost that breeds the desert 

snow, 
The blasts that shake the northern hills, and stab me as 

they go ; 
Hateful these prisoned lakes and streams, grim, sullen 

lengths of ground. 
These rivers chained in ringing ice, these mountains iron- 
bound, 
To one who, in the frozen gloom that wraps a songless 

world, 
With hands benumbed and eyes that flinch from stinging 

snows upwhirled, 
Still walks the banian's stately maze and dreams his 

waking dreams 



SUNNY LANDS. 61 

Of valleys red with orchis-flowers, of tropic groves and 
streams, 

And keeps alive this hope, that he on some glad coming 
time 

Shall hear the blue world of the sea roll round the South- 
ern clime ! 



AMONG THE GODS. 

WE harness the resplendent gods 
That neither sicken, halt, nor die ; 
For ours they leave their fair abodes 

In ocean cave and curving sky. 
The gods are ours, the strong, the grand, 

We hear their tread, their thunderous call, 
Lame Vulcan's forge, great Hermes' wand, 
Jove's flaming bolt, — we know them all. 

We leave the station to the right, 

A call; a jar, an iron clash ; 
We dip beneath the raven night. 

Into the slanting rain we dash ; 
Eed glow the lamps that burn behind, 

The headlight glitters white before. 
The dizzy sparks spin down the wind. 

The leagues from home grow more and more. 

Night flaps against the trickling pane. 
And down we roar against the night ; 

Wild blazes by the counter train. 

An earthquake's tramp, a whirlwind's might ; 



AMONG THE GODS. 63 

We whirl into the dripping glen, 

Between two jagged walls we fly ; 
Around two hundred silent men 

The echoes jangle, grind, and cry. 

Some grasp the prize and walk with Hope 

Down archways thick with tropic bloom ; 
O'er broken plans some, pining, grope 

In darkness like the inner tomb ; 
One goes from scenes whose tones and eyes 

Will sting him till he folds his hands 
In that supreme of mysteries 

Which God, God only understands. 

One goes to clasp the soft white hand 

Of her within whose tender eyes 
And tones he sees a Holy Land, 

The hills and groves of Paradise. 
Come in, blooming bridal pair, 

Come, happy bridegroom, lily bride I 
Through stormy night or sunny air 

Move hand in hand and side by side. 

To-day be jest and song and bloom, 

All dreams that trance young Love the blind ; 
Yet who may miss the evening gloom. 

The wrinkled heart, the homesick mind ? 



64 AMONG THE GODS. 

Come in, thou halt and crippled man ; 

On trampled field, in tangled wood, 
Where blood like mountain torrents ran. 

Thou in the battle-roar hast stood. 



And thou, with sad, averted face, 

And trouble in thy w^oman's eye. 
Can growing leagues or lightning's pace 

Drown memories that may never die ? 
Now by the dull canal we creep, 

Flanked by the meadows flat and gray, 
And now with scream and clash we leap 

The violet threshold of the day ; 



Now roar across the shuddering bridge 

That gives a long, resentful groan, 
The stretching hill whose pebbly ridge 

Seems some old Jotun overthrown ; 
Before, the shadows slow withdrawn 

Eoll backward on a whispering wind ; 
Close on the dying night the Dawn 

In ruby buskins runs behind. 



We pass the glory of the wheat, 
Beside the waking town we pass. 

The cottasje on the hillside sweet 
With pansy beds and freshest grass, 



AMONG THE GODS. 

The cattle knee-deep in the pool, 

Glens dark with firs and deep in moss, 

The black pine shadows falling cool. 
The alders in our wake that toss. 



O comfort of the flying pines, 

Of wind that sings and stream that foams ! 
O beauty of the climbing vines 

That clasp a thousand happy homes ! 
Man's world 1 Ah, here he hates and loves, 

Here o'er his shattered idols grieves. 
Builds his broad cities, plants his groves, 

And lies beneath their fallen leaves. 

Tearing the fringes of the cloud 

Around the mountain's verge we clang ; 
Where fogs that horn of granite shroud. 

We, when a moment dies, shall hang. 
O wondrous age ! O hands of might ! 

Ye thrust aside the ancient bars ; 
The friendly gods our battles fight. 

Oh, will they lift us to the stars ? 

The village looms and backward starts, 
Back slides the lake with mast and wave. 

We grind the elder giants' hearts. 
We trample on the Indian's grave ; 



60 



66 AMONG THE GODS. 

Now blaze from out two midnight walls 
That, mocking, give us crash for crash ; 

On purple flats the morning falls, 
Across a golden sea we dash. 



Alonff the gravevard's edoje we race, 

The sleeping shudder as we fly. 
Mould from the coffin's inner face 

Drops through the cavern once an eye ; 
Now poised as if on thinnest air 

Across the sea-deep gulf we flee, 
And round the crumbling ledges where 

An inch, and then — eternity ! 

Quick gleams the millpond's rosy glass. 

Quick breaks the glory of the corn. 
The pond, the corn as quickly pass, 

A world is just as quickly born ; 
While sad and low an undertone 

Creeps up through rattle, jar, and scream 
Of other wheels that speed us on 

More fleetly than the wheels of steam. 

A voice, a sign, above, around. 

In streams and rocks, in leaves and dew, 
In sky and earth a mystic sound 

Of fading Old and dawning New. 



AMONG THE GODS. 67 

New strength shall arm the coming hands, 
Old fears shall die, old barriers yield, 

Electric wheels shall cleave the lands 
And plough the ocean's azure field. 

Of this what hear and think the dead ? 

Do Cyril and Hypatia know ? 
When realms through stretching seas are wed 

Does Shelley's talk more grandly flow ? 
Do wheel and storm and battle send 

Their signals to that shrouded Land ? 
Uncertain fears must have an end, 

The sable station looms at hand. 

What is that life to come ? Where rise 

The hills that Saul and Homer see ? 
The land that cheats the sharpest eyes, 

The clime to which the nations flee ? 
Or is that clime a splendid dream 

So sweet that our poor hearts must cling 
Around it till its shadows seem 

A living and a lasting thing ? 

Where wanders she who left my side 

That sad September's latest morn. 
World-weary, closed her eyes and died 

One dreadful hour before the dawn ? 



68 AMONG THE GODS. 

What sees, what hears she now, what skies 
Her in their golden deserts fold ? 

What fields refresh her wondering eyes ? 
Those eyes shall I again behold ? 



BY THE SUSQUEHANNA. 

SWEET, sweet and sad it is, 
When the last drift is gone, to rove and feel 
The light south wind with sigh and rosy kiss 

Across ray forehead steal. 

The valleys smile on me 
Through their dim dreams ; the long, majestic lines 
Of hills, pine-black, rise still and regally ; 

A silver river shines 

Just at my feet. Along 
Its lucid face the burnished shadows lie 
Of pensive willows, elm-boles plumy, long, 

And glories of the sky. 

It is the hour when all 
That sleeps awakes from sleep save man. He lies, 
Nor heeds the spring's return, nor morning's call. 

The dust upon his eyes. 

Wings, sounds, all things that were 
Save the dead, come or seem to come again. 
Woods, fields, and waves with spring's quick pulses stir ; 

Each fibre, every vein 

Owns the electric thrill. 



70 BY THE SUSQUEHANNA. 

The wakening Power, the new-creatmg Breath 
From vale to vale moves on, from hill to hill ; 

With bloom life strangles death. 

To watch the warm, clear light 
Sparkle, and bathe these leaves and swelling buds ; 
To breathe these airs that bring me in their flight 

The scent of flowering woods, 

The silence, flash, and song, 
The stainless blue, this many-woven roof 
Tremulous, sun-steeped, these columns tall and strong, 

Are happiness enough. 

I gaze and think of those 
Who watched these quiet scenes in other years ; 
For them these valleys smiled, these hills arose. 

For them the tender spears 

Of herb and grass and corn 
Pierced the warm mould, a wonder strange as now ; 
The violet looked up, the dews of morn 

Trembled on blade and bough. 

One that was dear to me — 
I cannot think her dead, I call her gone — 
Saw these broad vales, these hills as now I see, 

The yellow light upon 

These knolls and hollows sweet 
With the wild rose and fern. The whispering breeze 
Lifts the green boughs she saw, and at her feet 

Spring the anemones. 

Gone, oh, so long, so long ! 



BY THE SUSQUEHANNA. 71 

I wonder if she ever thinks liow green 
These valleys lay, what golden wings of song 

Flashed on this quiet scene ; 

How bright the river glowed 
In the white morning, the red evening light, 
Or how above the dusky, dewy road 

The stars came out at night. 

Does she recall the spot. 
The hour far off beneath life's faded skies, 
When the gay, gold-eyed dandelions shot 

A bliss to childish eyes ? 

Thought asks, while the eye fills, 
Has she forgot, walking that mystic shore. 
Holding no wish to see the groves, the hills 

That she may walk no more ? 

When we grow tired, and lay 
Our poor, sick heads down for that sleep, the last 
And dreamless one, our troubles blown away. 

Losing and getting past. 

Do love and memory go. 
Visions of earthly beauty, verdure, art. 
Dew-blaze, the human face, the fountain's flow 

Failing with flesh and heart ? 



JOHN'S PASSING WOELD. 

*' Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." 

STAES have burned out in heaven ; the granite bones 
Of earth's cloud-piercing mountains crumble, fall 
Before the pelting rain and prying frost. 
Seas rolled and glittered where the lion roams, 
The lordly forests drink the withered blood 
Of those that bowed and perished at their roots. 
No less what lurks within the human brain 
Is food for change and ruin. Eeason reels, 
Love withers from the root, and memory dies ; 
All, all is doomed ; the lusts, the strong desires 
That on forbidden wine grow drunken, fail ; 
Even these decay, ashes to ashes flung ; 
The world, it passes with the lust thereof. 

Love not the world. But why love not a world 

That wears its beauty as a rose its bloom ? 

To set the heart upon a thing so fair 

With valleys, hills and groves, still lakes that glass 

Eock-rooted pine and fern-fringed mountain wall ; 



JOHN'S PASSING WORLD. 73 

To cherish that rapt feeling and sublime 

Which is to Worship sister oldest born, 

Touched by whose fire we fix lost, wondering eyes 

On that vast, dusky thing, the blazing Kight, 

Dumb, solemn, awful in her boundless pomp 

And sad magnificence of world on world ; 

To dote on grandeur, strength, hues, symmetry. 

Art, eloquence, — is that to worship stones, 

Or make us gods of silver, gold, or wood ? 

Love these we may, nor draw God's frown on us, — 

Love these, but only as expressive signs. 

Shadows and shadowy images of One 

Who well and wisely formed and governs all. 

Then, while the earthly dream holds out, and we 
Float down, — the stars all burning overhead. 
And underfoot graves not a few, with bloom 
Upon the bough and violets in the grass, — 
Erect no altars, plant no lofty groves 
Sacred to Baal. See that evening cloud. 
Opal and amethyst and ilaming gold ; 
Fading, it melts into the gathering gloom, 
The type of all man is, has been, shall be, 
His boasted glory, strength, and length of days. 

There is an inner as an outer death ; 

A dying from one hour into the next ; 

Hopes, fears, and feelings go, pass like a stream 



74 JOHN'S PASSING WORLD. 

Which was and is, yet cannot be the same ; 
They fade, they change, they perish like the moon, 
But not to be renewed, restored like her, 
Wl>en she, a white ship on a waveless sea. 
Sails glittering back to her abandoned throne ; 
Or, as the waves that fret the yellow sands, 
Two, though so like, can never be the same, 
Though millions heap their snows upon the beach. 
Baalbec put on the glory of the noon ; 
The morning star o'er Antilibanus, 
Trembling with bliss, hung not so beautiful. 

Memento mori. Thicker rise the graves, 

The graves are tenfold more than all the stars : 

Palmyra lolled beneath her broad-leaved palms, 

Drinking new wine and faring daintily — 

The sun and wandering planets not alone, 

All things revolve. The bridal, then the shroud ; 

A stamp, a yell of multitudes, a roar 

Of panthers in the amphitheatre ; 

A fighter down ; ten thousand thumbs turned up ; 

Dead sands and silence after — these remain. 

Seven months upon the proudest height of all 
By human foot attained, — oh, only seven ! — 
There by the free accordant will of those 
Who felt the strength and goodness of the man. 
From that high place he saw the teeming lands 



JOHN'S PASSING WORLD. 75 

Dip forward from his feet to touch the line 

Where the green world and brooding heavens meet : 

The purple seas, swift ships, white cities grand, 

The growing corn, the laden wharves he saw ; 

The vision brightened round him as the day 

Around the portals of the sprniging east ; 

The night came down, drawn by that murderous ball ; 

Then trembling and a cry as if the strong 

Foundations of the earth w^ere rent away, 

And star and star together whirled and shocked. 

Memento mori. Who may count the graves ? 

What armies from their homes and pleasures march 

To crowd those silent, vast Plutonian halls ! 

What will they hear or see, what gain or lose ? 

Will they find God, see one remembered face, 

One cry of joy or moan of misery hear ? 

Spirits have neither form nor ear nor eye, 

If the Church guesses right. Oh, do they think, 

Eemember our last kisses, these wild flowers. 

Green paths and dews and snow, the tears they shed ? 

This question. Lord, when shall I cease to ask. 

Or when forget to tremble for the dead ? 

Know they the hour when roses load the air 

AVith perfume and the hues they loved so well, 

Or guess the woe that seized us when we bowed. 

Stunned, helpless, dumb, and heard the final sigh 

Eise from the breast that could not heave again ? 



7Q JOHN'S PASSING WORLD. 

Would tliey not love to see these violets 

Sweeten the meadows with their human smile 

Once more, again these running waters hear, 

These plumy ferns, these mosses amber-green, 

Golden and crimson over eldest rock 

And tree, behold ? Would they not see once more 

These pensive, still, divine autumnal days, 

Whose tranquil hills and blazing splendors make 

Earth seem as if God's angels walked her face ? 

Or, travelling that long, mysterious road, 

Have they attained some milder star, whose winds 

Blow softly, and no winter's frosty breath 

Darkens the vales or chills one tender thing ? 

Or, sunk in those unfathomable calms 

That drench the soul departed, are they filled 

With joys that crowd from memory the joys. 

Pains, faces, friendships, memories born of earth, 

And every day is as the face of God, — 

God's face shorn of the lightning, — every hour 

A bringer of strong vintage to the soul, 

A kindler of high thoughts, majestic dreams ; 

Where summer in eternal roses sits 

Throned on the mountains, to their summit's crown, 

And every breeze is with the perfume faint, 

And every wind a rolling harmony. 

And on all heads an everlasting youth ? 



JOHN'S PASSING WORLD. 77 

Ages in heaven, yet ever growing young ! 

Life, life eternal ! Strange, oh, strange and sweet ! 

Carnage and fetters, bolts and tears and waste, 

Wrong, hunger, wrinkles, doubt and shipwreck gone ! 

Oh, can the dream so sweet, the dream so grand, 

Be hict a dream foundationless, inane ? 

Alas ! we neither hear nor see nor know ; 

Dim are the gleams, confused and weak the sounds 

That float around us from those mighty realms 

Of death or life, that, wrapped in shadows, stretch 

Beyond our little day of moans and songs. 

Yet have we seen it written that there was 
An earthquake great, and one came suddenly 
Whose countenance was like lightning, and he rolled 
From the grave's mouth the heavy stone away 
And sat thereon, his raiment white as snow. 
So to our troubled hearts, the winds, the groves, 
The spring that brings its happy birds and Howers, 
(Oh, birds and flowers, but not our precious dead !) 
And wreckful ocean's blazing waste of waves, 
We will go whispering this, while eyes grow dim, 
Knees tremble, graves usurp the fields, the globe, 
And the great Horror nearer, nearer creeps. 



OF all t 
and 



MIDSUMMEK. 

the summers that to me have come with bloom 



And wings that flash, and brooks that flee the grassy vales 

along, 
With waft of winds that leave at dusk their sweetest, 

balmiest kiss 
Upon the rose's heart of musk, the saddest one is this. 

The light flows down the spacious heaven, it floods the 

land, the sea, — 
The pleasant light on vale and hill hides not its smile 

from me ; 
And never throbbed a lustier life through turf or tangled 

wood, 
And never will a bluer dome above the mountains brood. 

But not to me as it hath been may be the seasons' flow, 
Or smile of spring, or summer's green, or autumn's tranquil 

glow ; 
For in the deep, glad summer gone, the latest one that 

died. 
She, wise and calm of eye, looked o'er the landscape bright 

and wide, 



MIDSUMMER. 79 

And when September's leaves grew pale she laid her down 

and died. 
With her a gladness passed from earth, a brightness from 

its bloom, 
And as the slow weeks roll away still deeper grows the 

gloom. 

Vain is the wish, but could I know where she is living now, 
How flow the streams, how rise the hills, what verdure 

clothes the bough, 
If streams and hills may lie beyond this earthly snow and 

rain. 
If will, affection, may survive man's rocking, dying brain, 
And when the poor, tired heart is still, thought, memory, 

yet remain ! 

Nor I alone ; ten thousand more through these gay sum- 
mer hours 

Will miss a music from the streams, a glory from the 
flowers. 

And many a troubled thought will rise and bitter tear be 
shed, 

And strong hearts faint and fainter grow for thinking of 
the dead ; 

Trembling lest all they loved be lost in those unfathomed 
deeps 

Wherein a God unknown his long, tremendous silence 
keeps, — 

A God unknowable his court in clouds and silence keeps. 



THE FALL CEICKET. 

TWO little gauzy wings 
Making a lonely sound, 
A mournful voice that sings 
Of earth's departing things 
Along the dusky ground. 

When twilight cool and gray 

Creeps o'er the purple hills, 
That lone, monotonous lay. 
From near or far away, 

The brooding silence thrills. 

From yonder hillside sere, 
Faint in an orange sky. 
From pastures far or near. 
And thickets dim, I hear 
That homeless voice go by. 

Centuries and centuries, — 

A threnody the same 
As ere in any breeze 
Waved Mariposa's trees 
Or great Columbus came. 



THE FALL CRICKET. 81 

A sad, complaining sound, 

To me it seems to say 
How man is cypress-crowned. 
How love in tears is drowned, 

How all tilings pass away. 

Thy youth is in its tomb, 

That pleasant dream is o'er ; 
To thee its strength will come. 
For thee its roses bloom 

No more, no more, no more. 

Gone is the rosy light 

That over all things lay, 
Making the bright more bright, 
Making a starrier night 

End in a sunnier day. 

Graves, graves, a world of graves ! 

We cannot walk or stand, — 
Graves where the sunshine laves 
The woods, and where the waves 

Break on the lonely strand. 

Graves in the grassy dell. 

Sadder within the soul ; 
A moan in the air, a knell, 
In the heart a midnight bell 

Making a deep, dull toll. 

6 



82 THE FALL CRICKET. 

In the east and west 

The lone graves of our love ; 
Across the peaceful breast 
Are weary hands at rest, 

And the stars shine on above. 

A restless wind that moans 

Over a land of tombs, 
Drifting the crumbled bones 
Of those who sat on thrones, — 
A stir of funeral plumes. 

Dear eyes, sweet faces lean 

Across the withered years, 
Faces no longer seen. 
For yonder mounds of green, 
Dim through our falling tears. 

So in the haunted night 

The singer sings to me. 
While all the hills are bright, 
And the moon, like a galley white. 
Is ploughing a silent sea. 



A DEEAM OF THE BLESSED DEAD. 

WITHDEAWN into the central calms of God, 
Where falls not heat or frost or any hail, 
A goodly land of rivers clear and broad, 

With many a grove and still, far-winding vale 
Whose fountains sparkle and whose balms are shed 
From boughs unfading, walk the Blessed Dead. 

They faded from our eyes ; we call that death. 

They trod no nether glooms Plutonian, 
No sunless Hades drew them pale beneath : 

The old life ended and the new began. 
To sweeter waters, joys unknown before, 
The closing eye was but the opening door. 

Death has not robbed them of one look or grace 
That drew us to their side while walking here ; 

The thoughtful eye, the sweet peculiar face. 
Are still the same in that untroubled sphere. 

Fair in the flesh were they ; oh, fairer there 

In that diviner light and softer air. 



84 A DREAM OF THE BLESSED DEAD. 

Know what it is to die. We close our eyes, 
Earth and its faces pass, the heart grows still : 

In that majestic world beyond we rise; 

Scenes, as of earthly mould, the vision fill, — 

Cities and mountains, men and streams and vales, 

And lustrous woods that bend to rosy gales. 

Our glasses pierce the frosty deeps of space, 
That mystic world eludes the keenest eye ; 

It has among the outmost stars no place, 
It blazes not along the nearer sky. 

Let Knowledge sneer ; doubt not ; we never are 

By land or sea from that green country far. 

For all around us spreads the Spirit's World, — 
So near, yet all unfelt, unheard, unseen ; 

Across its hills our merchandise is whirled. 

Our rivers foam and w^ave our maize-ears green 

Above its streets ; and though we cannot see, 

Our garments graze its awful tenantry. 

The Blessed Dead have found eternal rest, — 
No grinding toil, no fears, no wasting cares ; 

And though each head lies pillowed on His breast, 
No slumbrous lapse of idle days is theirs ; 

Within each heart a living ardor glows, — 

Not dreams God gives his angels, but repose. 



A DREAM OF THE BLESSED DEAD. 85 

So have T seen a river broad and deep 

And rapid, drawn by silver-margined isles 

And meadows dewy green, with lordly sweep, 
And under skies o'erflowed by summer smiles, 

Glide to the sea. Noiseless and clear it rolls ; 

Such rest God's portion is to happy souls. 

Eternal Beauty there her dwelling makes. 
There is her court primeval, her delight, 

No crawling tiling the soul's disgust awakes, 
No Satyr-shapes or bestial lips affright ; 

No poisonous streams through rotting sedges creep, 

From flowery lairs no stinging serpents leap. 

No tainted blood, no care-bewildered brain 

Clips the free wing of quick and bounteous thought ; 

Truth never grasped on earth, or grasped with pain, 
Comes from its envious covert half unsought ; 

No sombre fogs the soul's horizon stain, 

God's darkest ways beneath its eye grow plain. 

The Happy Dead, — ah, never, never dead ! 

Who walk so fair, who wear such youth as they ? 
Though death once pressed upon their eyes like lead, 

He in their presence can no longer stay ; 
Sweet words, — oh, when were sweeter said or sunp-? — 
To gather year's in Heaven is growing young. 



86 A DREAM OF THE BLESSED DEAD. 

Where walk the Blessed Dead illusion dies, 

The Spirit's World is pure reality ; 
No lights delusive cheat those tearless eyes, 

The Blessed Dead live not by fantasy ; 
God leads by shadows, types, illusions here, 
By naked truths in that diviner sphere. 

The Spirit's World is wide. Therein is room 
For all ten thousand earths can thither send ; 

Eealms swept by spicy winds, regions of bloom, 
Forever deepening as they run, extend 

Spaces no thought can grasp, — a summer land 

Of streams and lily vales and mountains grand. 

And there, for number like the ocean sands. 

In races, peoples, ranks, societies, 
Successive generations, tribes and bands, 

Cities and nations, shining companies, — 
No doubts to drive away, no fears to quell. 
They walk with God, in love ineffable. 

Oh, it was never flashed through thought or dream 
What large and holy liberties are theirs, 

What regal glories on their vision stream, 

What golden songs convulse the heavenly airs ; 

The clime they walk, the joys in which they dwell. 

Our subtlest words are all too poor to tell. 



A DREAM OF THE BLESSED DEAD. 87 

Eising and setting suns are there unknown, 

None say, Make haste, comes on the gloomy night ; 

Of that resplendent clime the Lord is sun ; 
No envious cloud runs by to snatch his light : 

But voices rise. Wide is this ho.ppy strand, 

Clear are these streams, green is the Morning Land. 

Calm are their eyes ; their thoughts, their joys are calm, 
They never wish the long, still day would die, 

Their years flow onward a melodious psalm, 
The Blessed Dead know not satiety ; 

For joys or faces gone they do not pine. 

Nor ask in gloom when better days will shine. 

They never grieve that they have left no name 

Adown the ingulfing ages proudly borne ; 
To feel and know Him nigh is sweetest fame, 

Fairer than marble piles. They do not mourn 
That o'er their bones howl the tumultuous waves, 
Or savage briers hide their forgotten graves. 

And some so long, so many, many years 

Have walked those hills and watched those lucid streams, 
That earth's most cruel wounds and fiery tears 

Are things forgot, or half-remembered dreams. 
On such a silvery stream of hours they glide ; 
The storm is past, their hearts are satisfied. 



88 A DREAM OF THE BLESSED DEAD. 

They turn their eyes upon the heights that glow 

Beyond them, — golden heights they yet must climb ; 

Bright are those towering domes, bat not with snow ; 
Through heaven's soft air far glittering and sublime 

They rise, and when those glorious heights are past, 

Others ascend as glorious and as vast. 

Oh, many in that long, bright summer stand, 
Who little thought while doubting, pining here, 

That they should ever see the goodly land, 
Or fall of the celestial fountains hear ; 

And when they saw the heavenly mountains rise, 

What comfort seized thpm, oh, what sweet surprise 1 

Anon across that land of painless hours 
Gleams from this dim, receded planet fall, 

Faint flush of summer vales, faint breath of flowers, 
Of earthly streams a distant, dying call, — 

Sigh of remembered groves almost as fair 

As those which bathe in that celestial air. 



For much that is of earth most bright and pure 
Pursues the absent soul. Tones, Alpine hues 

And vastness, songful mornincjs such as cure 
The heart-ache, flashing jewelry of dews. 

Autumnal splendors, pressure of dear lips 

Surviving all, outrun death's black eclipse. 



A DREAM OF THE BLESSED DEAD. 89 

Sometimes amid their easy toil they pause 
And call the name of some remembered one 

Whose heart was breaking when they stepped across 
That dreadful threshold to the Land Unknown ; 

And then their hearts within them burn to tell 

That sorrowing one that all with them is well. 

For though in such transcendent joys they dwell, 
Still are the faces left behind them dear, 

Dear the remembered kiss, the long farewell, 

The gentle hands that smoothed their troubles here ; 

And when God's chosen ones come flocking home. 

They throng around to see if these are come. 

Along those radiant mountains undefiled, 
And in those happy vales the Blessed Dead 

Find their lost loves. The mother clasps her child 
Lamented long. They who were early wed, 

And parted ere the bridal flowers grew pale, 

There meet above the thunder and the hail. 



And millions to that tranquil country go, — 

Eosebuds just blushing through the calyx green, 

Transplanted by a tender Hand to blow 
In purer airs and valleys more serene ; 

They know not that they budded here below ; 

That here they faded, fell, they do not know. 



90 A .DREAM OF THE BLESSED DEAD. 

Oh, well it is so soon to fail and die ! 

To cheat the envy of the sapping hours, 
Never to wait and feel the veins grow dry, 

To sleep, to wake among God's whitest flowers ! 
To lay the infant curls upon his breast. 
And missinsf mother's kiss, climb to His rest ! 



BAALBEC. 

PRESSING the feet of Antilibanus 
With feet of radiant stone, 
Thou didst arise a vision glorious, 

And City of the Sun. 
Thine were the palm and olive ; oh, the streams 

That round thee gushed and sung 
Made thee more fair than faces seen in dreams ; 
The grape about thee clung. 

No greener lawns than thine, no bluer skies 

Than o'er thy temples shone. 
No hills with summits bathed in richer dyes 

Earth's many lands have known. 
From the piled wharves and gay bazaars of Tyre 

To thee the trader came 
With precious stones, — the diamond's living fire, 

The ruby's steady flame. 

Numidia, seated by the Western Sea, 

Brought thee her corn and gum, 
Arabia and Phoenicia gave to thee 

Gold, aloes, galbanum. 



92 BAALBEC. 

Murex and cumin, oil and tliyine wood, 

Nard and the yellow tears 
Of frankincense, fine flour, the fragrant blood 

Of balsam that adheres 
To the goat's beard, and fleeces of the sheep 

That browse the hills of Crete, 
Balls that the myrrh-bush and acacia weep. 

Fine linen, brass, and wheat. 
Men walked like gods, dark, radiant women shone 

AVithin thy gilded halls. 
And odorous lamps from silvery mirrors thrown 

On carven doors and walls 
Made thy night-watches like a summer noon ; 

As when a light wind blows 
O'er leagues of roses till the senses swoon, 

Thy nuptial music rose. 
Fond human hearts beat in thee, loved and bled ; 

Man's anguish, woman's woe 
Sat in thy homes ; mothers, their soft babes dead, 

Wept sorely, bending low. 

In thee the war-horse pranced, the buckler gleamed ; 

Soon as the dawn began 
To tinge thy towers, from thy broad gates outstreamed 

The long, dark caravan ; 
O'er barren sands or swathed in mountain mist, 

Fronting the violet dawn, 



BAALBEC. 93 

It crept, lost in the gray, majestic East, 

Heading for Ctesiphon, 
Tadmor, Seleucia, and the golden land 

Where from an empire's grave 
Bagdad arose, Susa, fierce Samarcand, 

And Cush by Elam's wave, — 
Great climes whose marble bulls with human eyes 

And eagle sweep of wings 
Guarded kings, crowns, and gorgeous palaces 

From breath of evil things, — 

Far lands that heard the roaring Indus flood, 

Fountains of Candahar, 
And hills that bathed in orient splendors stood 

Close to the Morning Star ; 
Thence came with Indian fruits and cinnamon. 

Silks shining from Cathay, 
And gems that in a brown, rough-coated stone 

Hoarded the dying day ; 
Cloth of Cashmere, musk, storax, ebony, 

Pearls from the sea-caves won, 
Calamander, satin-wood, spice, ivory, 

And cat's- eye from Ceylon. 

Who reared thy stately stairs and porticos, 

Stupendous piles ? Who rolled 
Thy mighty stones together, — walls that rose 

Thick-gemmed and deep in gold ? 



94 BAALBEC. 

What regal souls were thine whose genius flowed 

In fountain singing low, 
In wreath and arch and panel shone, or glowed 

In flute and ovolo ? 
Did they with eager hands reach forth for God 

Through that perennial night, 
Hoping the dim, uncertain path they trod 

Might wind across His light ? 
Did they count death their chief of woes, and lay 

Their dead within the tomh 
In tears such as the liopeless weep, or say. 

Smiling, The life to come 
Is near and full and long ; to die is ivell ; 

Unending joys are there ; 
Better than earthly rose is asphodel, 

Sweeter than stripes and care 

Soft winds around serene Elysian Isles 

And fadeless meadoivs Mown; 
There Nestor walks, there great Ulysses smiles, 

Ended is hale and moan. 
A Sarsar blew ; thy sumptuous revelries, 

Feasts, music, gods are gone ; 
Thou art as Nineveh and Persepolis, 

Silent as Babylon. 
Why thus ? Oh let that Power who sits so high, 

Give answer if he will, 



BAALBEC 95 

Granite must fail, stars totter from the sky, 

Niagara's shout grow still. 
Arcade, pavilion, dome, acanthus wreath. 

Fold on voluptuous fold, 
Columns on which men gazed and held their breath. 

Ceilings that budded gold, 



Altars and palaces, princes, temples, halls, 

Gone, gone the silent way ! 
Above crushed arches, crumbled capitals. 

The kids of Syria play ; 
And a salt wind runs up, an ancient moan 

From the Levantine wave 
Eocks the broad, beechen zone of Lebanon, 

And dies upon thy grave. 



GETTING OK 

DEEM not success alone is found 
With noise, and pomp, and outward show 
Nor think that they alone are crowned 
To whom men's willing praises flow. 
For oft the veriest friends of God 

Have lived uncheered, and weak, and poor, 
Or, fainting and heartbroken, trod 
A pathway rugged and obscure ! 



For them no stately ships divide, 

AVith lusty prow, the w^eltering main ; 
They not in gilded chariots ride, 

They gather not the golden grain. 
No, what ambition's children name 

Success, is not for such as they ; 
Neglected, poor, and dead to famC; 

They fall and perish by the way. 



GETTING ON. 97 

Their glory is a galling cross, 

That goes like fire into the soul ; 
Their greatest gain is certain loss, 

The floods around them break and roll. 
But heart-sick, weary, and forlorn, 

They hear the whispered comfort come : 
GocTs brightest crown is sharpest thorn^ 

His grandest prize is inartyrcloni. 



THE WOELT) OF SPIEITS. 

THOUGH some would tremble, none would doubt, 
Could they but see how near it lies, 
Shadowing eternal leagues about 

Earth's pomps and graves and centuries. 

No whisper from that hidden land 

Steals through the barrier raised between ; 

There reaches forth no beckoning hand. 
No shadow by our own is seen. 

The light that streams through endless space, 

From distant sun or farthest star, 
And mightiest rivers in their race, 

Flow not where our departed are. 

Around the globe our lightning flies. 

White fly our ships across the sea ; 
We track the comet through the skies, 

We weigh the sun's immensity. 



THE WORLD OF SPIRITS. 99 

x4.nd yet no skill, no words of ours, 

No flight, no call can touch the sense 
Of those who, incorporeal powers, 

Walk in that pure intelligence. 

Still we may tread no foot of ground, 

Pluck roses, stumble in the snow, 
Except we press that mystic bound, 

Nay, cross it, though we cannot know. 

Into those skies our factories rise, 

Our engines dash through golden thrones ; 

In those calm eyes is no surprise, 
There drop no loosened chalcedons. 

Of robes no trail, of hearts no beat 

We hear or feel, though these are nigh ; 

Each world, in ignorance complete, 
Sees not the other round it lie. 

Their streets divide the mountain's mass, 

Their temples shine amidst the sea, 
Through sapphire palaces we pass, 

Nor heed our royal company. 

They throng our shut or open doors. 

We, face to face, unconscious meet ; 
Their steps are on our lawns, our floors. 

But soundless fall ethereal feet. 



100 THE WORLD OF SPIRITS. 

Their steps, their tones we cannot hear 
Through fleshly barriers interposed, 

We cannot see them standing near 
Because our inner eyes are closed. 

These opened, we might turn like him 
Who stood beside the ancient Seer, 

And see the hosts of cherubim, 
Eank over glittering rank, appear. 

Oh, awful world ! dread Spirit Land ! 

Thy realm above, around us lies ; 
Clasped in thy arms our mountains stand. 

Thy sky tints dimly through our skies. 

One little gust of wind too rough. 

One draught of pleasure's cup too free, 

Of wrinkles, aches, and cold enough, — 
The blinds swing open and we see. 



PASSED OUT OF SIGHT. 

IGEIEVE not for my sister gone ; much more 
Do I rejoice that she has left a world 
To her so cold and bare and colorless, 
A life of sleepless nights and heavy days, 
Till One drew nigh and took her hand and said, 
Arise and follow mc. And she arose 
And, following, beheld, and saw his face 
And form, that they were like the Son of God. 

You scarce would choose the lot appointed her 
Of God, for it was thorny. Thankless toil, 
The weariness that steeps the bones when day 
Drops in the west, which clings to every joint 
And nerve when morning brightens m the east ; 
Anxiety for the bread that nourishes 
The body, for the roof that holds at bay 
The autumn rain and driving winter snow ; 
Care for the orarments that must clothe the limbs 



102 PASSED OUT OF SIGHT. 

Of those who were her babes, and raised to hers 
Blue, pleadmg eyes and little helpless hands, — 
Such were her joy and portion in the world. 

She loved all gentle things, the hues and forms 
That clothe the earth with beauty, singing brooks 
That leap into the sunshine with a shout 
From the cool shadows of the fragrant woods. 
The vines that shake their blue and golden flowers 
Eound open doors on dreamy summer noons, 
And birds, and swelling buds that prophesy 
The coming of the blithe ambrosial spring. 
She took life's sharpness without moan or plaint, 
Yet there came early to her sweet, calm eyes, 
And settled there, a sad and weary look ; 
And when the end came, and the shadow fell 
On those sad eyes, and her poor heart — the heart 
That had endured so well and ached so long — 
Grew still, there must have been a blessed gain. 

And now her eyes on hill and grove and stream 

Are closed, and I shall see her face no more. 

She closed her eyes on this bright, lovely world 

To wake in one more brioht and beantiful 

And green, — near, near, oh, nearer than men think 

A greener, larger, sweeter, better world. 

And I have thought with what bewildered eyes 

She looked around on those eternal hills, 



PASSED our OF SIGHT. 103 

And saw how endless, wonderful, exact, 

Was the analogy of all that rose 

Upon her view with all that she had seen 

And felt while burdened here, — sun, moon, and clouds, 

Winds, cities, mountains, fields and trees and men. 

And she has said. How different is death, — 

Death, whom I found no cruel, angry foe ! 

How different the life that lies heyond 

The shroud, the coffin, and the tolling hell, 

From all that preacher preached or singer sung 

In that blind luorlcl ivhich I shall lualk no more ! 



AN ELEGY. 

Talk as we will of immortality, there is an obstinate feeling that we end 
in death. All that we know of life is connected with a shape, a form, a 
body of materialism. — F. W. Kobektson. 

We do not know that death does not end all. "We have neither sense 
nor mental vision of a man after he dies. We do not find him. Where 
he is, or that he is at all, is absolutely iinknown to us. — Bishop Foster, 
of M. E. Church. 

SAD Life on earth ; far Life beyond its verge : 
One, stormy, vain, and swift, its meaning dim ; 
The other rolled in clonds, beyond all thought. 
Oh, life is sad ; so brief the golden space 
Betwixt the twilights of the morn and eve ! 
The swallows go ; the roses die so soon ; 
We cannot hear the thrushes sin^ for si^^hs. 



'O' 



Life is so solitary ; we may touch 
The souls around us only as the rim 
Of circle falls to circle, point to point. 
That which in us is grandest, deepest, best. 
The awful shadows, red baptismal fires. 
Convulsing storms, gaunt famines of the soul. 



AN ELEGY. 105 

Divine suggestions, aspirations high, — 
These come and go, by all save us unguessed ; 
We weep and laugh alone, alone we die, 
Walk that long, long, eternal road alone. 

Monon pros mono7i, moaned the sorrowing Greek, 
Straining to pierce the cloudy realm of death 
With those poor eyes. Forth to the dread Alone 
Goes the alone from all the wind and hail. 
As that last darkness rushes on the brain 
The solitary soul across the sea 
Drifts to the dread and solitary God, 
Leaving the tent it dreamed in on the beach 
To rot in storms and blow along the sands. 

Life is so short ; so few and small the sheaves 
Our hands may gather ere the shadows fall. 
And we with eyelids weary go to sleep ; 
So little time with Nature, hand in hand, 
Pressing our eyes against the violets. 
Awed by the gospel of unfolding leaves, — 
We cannot see the crocuses for tears. 

And such a growing trouble in the air, 
Deeper with every parting of the snow 
And sod, to heap the never-ending graves : 
A rustle as of garments trailed unseen, 
A whisper running through the empty rooms 



106 AN ELEGY. 

Whence those we love went forth, silent, alone, 
Into the night to stay so long, so long. 
Oh, never word or touch or any sign ; 
So many years beyond that frozen main, 
And never hint that they remember us ! 

White curtains of the Everlasting Day, 

Pushed earthward by the blowing breath of God, 

From our sad eyes ye fold away our dead 

As silently, as deep as if ye hung 

Black curtains of the Everlasting Night. 

Swifter than hungry eagles on the prey 

From some high crag down launched on hissing wings, 

With infinite hunger-pains and cryings wild. 

All thoughtful souls fly through the mouldy grave, 

The white Star-universe, and black Inane, 

To find the dead ; the dead are never found. 

Strange, if they think and love and care as then. 
They may not lift one faintest voice to help 
Those who fight on in doubt and trembling here, 
Dumb, growing old in tears that fall for them. 
Is God so bound by grim necessity, 
Some iron law before, above all law, 
Ghance, Fate, or God still higher than himself. 
That his unseen may never cross his seen ? 
Or are tJiei/ dropped from being, we the fools 



AN ELEGY. 107 

Of space and time and this phantasmal world ? 
A little while we weep and laugh and toil ; 
Much seems for man designed, above, around, 
Upon a hundred shores, a thousand hills. 
As many cities, the green length of woods ; 
We deem the lavish sunshine lies /or us. 

A chilling cloud is blown across our eyes ; 

We fail. We go ; we know not where we go ; 

No world swings wide its silver door for us 

Among those awful, palpitating stars, 

Too well we know. As well we know there spreads 

No other, nearer world beneath save this 

Which gave us life and puffs that life away. 

Then which way can we look for some green isle 

Moored in the shoreless ocean's tumbling waste, — 

A life to come, that heaven of which we prate ? 

God pity, when our little barque moves down 

On some sad night to shoot the deep abyss. 

And we can never know how long the fall 

Down those black jaws to where the roses blow. 

One spring and then another since she died ; 
Oh, might I know but this, — that still she thinks, 
Or sometimes may draw nigh to look on me, 
These branching evergreens and lustrous vines, 
And hear the birds pour from these spicy boughs 
The songs she loved in days that come no more ! 



108 AN ELEGY. 

The lilies prank the garden and the field ; 

A day has left them stale, another kills. 

What is there gone amiss ? Where is the wise ? 

What is there may remain ? Not even that dome, 

Blue, boundless, crystalline, sown with sun and star : 

All shall be rolled together as a scroll, 

Elow with the heat, die and dissolve in smoke ; 

So saith the Word, the strong and dreadful God 

Who, changing not, is yet a God of change. 

And on the stones of ruin builds his throne, — 

Life, verdure, beauty, rolling globes of light. 

Yet, ah ! so sweet the endless song that hope 
To some strange harp sings in the bafiied soul ; 
So beautiful and calm the heavenly hills 
Above the hail, the thunder, and the snow. 
So deep a zone of lihes round their sides, 
We may not starve our souls on carob husks. 

No, we will not with sackcloth gird our loins. 
Nor on our heads the funeral ashes strew ; 
Oh, rather down the all-defacing years. 
Be it the calm or whirlwind, will we sing 
That only by these wasteful fires that burn 
The verdure from our way, these loads of pain. 
Doubts, fears, and graves the noisy world heeds not 
(For which it hath no help although it heed). 
Are we made meet for greener shores than these. 
And stiller valleys fanned by rosier winds ! 



NEAR THE SEA. 

LIKE men who from their earthly places drop 
So quietly that none give moan or tear, 
And dust is spread upon their lips and eyes, 
The dead catalpa blossoms, one by one. 
Fall in the dallyings of an idle wind 
Whose light wings wander here so silently 
That not a murmur haunts the languid bouglis, 
Nor any leaf stirs on the slender spray. 

So still the night, so voiceless, dead ; and yet 
A mile away the great sea constantly 
Utters that strange, unfathomable cry 
To the wide air, the rocks, and hard gray sands ; 
Then over barren fields and simmering roofs 
Sends his long, mournful, inconsolable wail. 
To find me here alone with Pain and Night, 
The moon, and God's grand retinue of stars. 

To me it is a sad, mysterious sound ; 
Not hard it is to think the mighty sea 
Is like to some of us, that his great heart 
Knows some immortal sorrow, some deep wound 



110 NEAR THE SEA. 

Which ever bleeds, cannot be healed, which he 
Would not have healed because he would not thus 
Forget the joys, the faces and the tones, 
That were a heaven in days dead long ago, — 
Lips once so sweet, never to speak again ! 

And still he lays his hoary forehead down 
Against the jagged rocks and level sands, 
Tangles his white beard in the glistening sands, 
And sobs, and drenches the slow winds with tears, 
Sending to me along the evening gloom 
That vast and lamentable cry of pain. 
Is it for grief that earth has lost her white 
Primeval innocence, or that he weeps 
For some green island world that with its groves, 
Its fountains, its broad vales, its cities fair, 
And forms more beautiful than human, went 
Down to its i^rave within his caverns cold ? 

Or can it be that like those sons of men 
Who walk the earth in unknown multitudes. 
He may not sleep for thinking of the dead ? 
Myriads go sorrowing without a hope. 
Saying, The dead are perished ; when we part 
In the death-room we never meet again. 
These hear the moaning of that other sea 
Innavigable, dark, a thousand times 
]\Iore deep than the Atlantic's deepest vale. 



NEAR THE SEA. HI 

And oh, with streaming eyes and breaking hearts 

And trembling hands they dredge the shallower coast, 

Thinking to get some answer, though more faint, 

Than airs that move the leaves on stillest nights, — 

One little trinket, one poor lock of hair. 

One whisper to the living from the dead, 

To talk with them of life beyond these tears ! 

And their reward ; behold it ; handle it, — 

The everlasting moaning of the waves 

That break and break across their withered hearts ; 

Waves felt and seen and heard by only them. 



B 



THE SUN. 

OUNDLESS, unchangeable, beaming, the Ukeness of 
God the All maker, 

Ever, forever, the heavens are singing and flashing his 
glory ; 

Ever the firmament showeth his handiwork limitless, 
perfect ; 

Day unto day hath a language swifter and stiller than 
star-beams 

Glinting on ripple and blossom and dews of the green- 
lying meadow. 

Night unto night through the Vast of the nebulous, ulti- 
mate spaces 

Whispers the manifold secret of knowledge that passes 
our knowing. 

Never hath speech been uttered, oh, never was cavern or 
desert 

Hidden so far, so forgotten that voices reverberant, choral. 

Sounded not forth his praises and sang not the Infinite 
Patience ; 

Gone is their sound to the uttermost limits of form and 
of being. 



THE SUN. 113 

God for the Sun in the heavens hath set a pavilion 

resplendent, 
Brighter than palaces beam, more shining than raiment of 

princes ; 
Lo ! as a strong man girt for the race or the battle rejoices, 
Lo ! as the bridegroom comes in the glory of youth from 

his chamber, 
So is the Sun in his going, — he runneth his circuit 

rejoicing. 

Bright are his feet on the mountains ; he scorch eth the 

eye with their splendor ; 
Father of congregate vapors and rivers that gladden the 

valleys ; 
Sweetness is he to the rose and strength to Behemoth the 

dreadful. 
Swiftness and beauty and might to the wings of the cloud- 
cleaving eagle. 
His are the purple of Sharon and dew-spangled pastures 

of Bashan, 
Greenness and skipping of young lambs, ewe-bleat and 

lowing of cattle. 
There by the fountains of God in the chrysolite meadows 

of Bashan. 

Silently, cell upon cell, he buildeth the cedars majestic 
Low in the wind of the West on the shoulders of Lebanon 
sighing ; 



114 THE SUN. 

His are the bow and the cloud, his the wail and the 

throbbing of Ocean, 
Whirlwind and ruin ; he blanches the world with the 

crack of the thunder. 
Never, concealed from his gaze hath a gossamer streamed 

on the morning, 
Glimmered the wing of a moth or glistened a leaf of the 

forest ; 
And as his lidless eye runs on through the deserts of 

heaven. 
On through the frightful waste of the Galaxy's frozen 

abysses, 
Firing the hair of the comet and meting the leagues of its 

marches. 
Wasting, his beams on the outstretching, limitless black- 
ness of darkness, 
Where like dust in a room float his golden-haired children 

the planets. 
Counting the ripples, the green multitudinous graves of 

the peoples. 
Say, hath the eye ever looked on the land of the dreaded 

Hereafter, 
Country of separate spirits, — Hades the keeper of 

secrets, 
Into whose bosom the nations .are drawn as the rivers to 

Ocean ? 
Ask ; could he hear, could he speak, oh, what would 

the Light-giver answer ? 



THE SUN. 115 

Would we not hush our laughter and pause in our feast- 
ing and getting, — 

Saying, The hand co7}ies hack that moved on the loall of 
Belshazzar, 

Comes in the Sun's sad No rolled down through the terrible 
silence, 

Stilling the harpings of Ocean and cleaviiig the soul like 
an earthquake ? 



BEYOND. 

OFEIEND unknown, whose face I never see, 
Yearning to know what death's long night may mean, 
And lift that veil of tenfold mystery 

Which hides the mighty realm of Life Unseen, 

Let go thy fears ! The world we walk is not 
What to our dim and troubled eyes it seems ; 

Its most enduring forms and happiest lot 
Are of such texture as we see in dreams. 

Here God leads by illusion ; but behind 

These fleeting hues and empty images 
The eye, with earthly dust no longer blind, 

That Eeal World and all its wonder sees. 

Not on some distant star, some dazzling sun, 
Far sunk within the cold and desolate skies, 

That world, with golden blossoms overrun, 
And all its swarming populations, lies. 



BEYOND. 117 

But thou shalt know, when years have died, how near 
Its streams, clear-rolling, sang around thy feet. 

While thou didst go in fear and trembling here. 
Nor heed its fragrant lawns and sunshine sweet. 

Dread not to die ! It is as when one goes 

From some dim-curtained and ill-garnished room 

To one whose mirrors flash, wliose music flows, 
Whose new-blown roses all the air perfume. 

Yes, thou shalt rise to friends and tender looks, 
And groves that feel the warm wind's spicy breath. 

The pomp of blooming hills, the lapse of brooks, 
The throngs of men, to know there is no death. 

Oh, faring on, poor, baffled, sad, and old. 

Stumbling on graves and dimmed with battle-scars, 

Better such creed than fame or vaults of gold. 
Or wings to soar with Science through the stars. 



THE STOEM KING. 

BY flashing day and spangled night 
Blaze of summer, glare of winter -white, 
Aloft, alone, 

On his mighty pedestal of stone, 
His immemorial throne, 
Sitteth the Storm King. 
Bones of rock, and cedarn hair. 
Hair of cedar, laurel, aspen, oak, 
Ampelopsis, bramble, fern, 
Down his lusty shoulders rolled, 
Bj the blowing west wind rippled, rolled ; 
Shoulders by the shattering thunder scarred, 
CJnawed by the teeth of rain. 
Hurricane, wind, and frost. 
Wearing his centuries like a flower, he sits ; 
Has sat since the Master Builder drew 
The shallow floods from all the w^eltering waste. 
And piled in rock-rimmed, dolorous, thundering seas, 

Over the sunshine's lucid meadows far 
Looks he northward, sombre, silent, stern, 
Across a thousand vales, as many streams, 
Unfathomable gulfs of verdure thronged 



THE STORM KING. 119 

With strenuous life, vein, pore, and myriad cell, 

Shining villas, shaven lawns, fruited fields 

Where men plough and reap and hoard. 

Then lie beneath the sod their hands have clothed 

With verdure, sweetness, gardens, villages ; 

Lifts his shaggy, spectral arms, 

And through the driving rain and sunshine clear 

Beckons to his strong compeers that sit 

Among the Catskills high on purple thrones ; 

Sees a thousand groves 

Wave, grow old, and die, 

A thousand vineyards bud, and flush, and blacken 

Into the aromatic. 

Deep-shouldered, perfect cluster ; 

Sees the airy spires of Newburgh gleam, 

Till the great stars come out, and morn 

Walks with light feet the cool and ruby east ; 

Hears low, low, low, under the howl of winds, 

Moan of gray, droning, melancholy rains, 

And endless clapping of the silvery hands 

Of his innumerable laughing leaves. 

The joy and wailing of great bells 

Eung for the bridal train, tolled for the dead ; 

Sees the emulous, majestic, swift, 

Hard-pantiug steamboats cleave the glassy bay. 

In the spring his dull, cold veins 
Kindle, sparkle, and throb ; 



120 rilE STORM KIXG. 

Ill the spring his seamed, uiiscahible sides 

Blaze with violets, tliitter, Hash, and blaze 

With rosy lires of azalea, 

Kalmia's far-running, never-scorching Hames ; 

The scarlet-Haring lamps of columbines 

Around his forehead, gray and thunder-scarred, 

Swing in the happy south wind numberless ; 

Along that gray, rough forehead I have seen 

The gold corydalis trail its dewy hair, 

And the pale wind-tlower in his steep-walled dells 

Nestle and tremble to heaven's lightest breath. 

In the spring the gentle mayttower 
From the brown leaves that clothe his stony feet 
Opens the eyelids of its sweet, wild eye 
To the blue, benignant eye of heaven, 
And upbreathes its grateful balms. 
In summer he is beautiful ; 
No one may tell how beautiful. 
Nor how green and starry falls the robe 
That down his Atlantean frame 

Through the still, jewelled mornings floats and flows. 
In autumn beautiful is Storm King. A robe 
Of bronze and orange and clear-flowing gold, 
Striped and fringed with dusky emerald. 
To his firm, flinty feet rolls murmuring. 
In winter beautiful is Storm King, — 
A beauty faultless, silvery, glacial, tierce ; 



THE STORM KING. 121 

A mantle snowy, radiant, clear as heaven, 

Spotless whiteness, aching brightness, sparkles, flashes, 

From his aged shoulders flows 

Silent, wonderful, to his aged feet : 

Splendors and shadows blue, — 

lUuer the dome of heaven never shone. 

Many a white, high-vaulted day. 
Many a lonely night, 

While the large, gold-haired, sparkling stars 
Come out to laud and sing 
Together, shaking heaven's firm-pillared halls 
With melodies unheard on earth. 
Undreamed of by the busy throngs of earth, 
The ice-wind strong that down from Greenland howls, 
The ice-wind wild that roars from Labrador, 
His stainless mantle rends and puffs. 
Smiting his iron brow with iron wings. 

He hears, he sees, yet this tremendous Sphinx 
With thrice-sealed lips along the Hudson glooms ; 
Dumb, dumb, dumb, yet well he hears and feels. 
Feels round his feet the lordly river creep, 
Cling and murmur, climb and fall ; 
On blazing nights when the bright, bitter North 
Through waters, fields, and ways and dwellings shoots 
A clashing hardness as of adamant, 
He feels, he hears the resolute, massive tread 



122 THE STORM KING. 

Of the harnessed giant 

Pressing that tremulous, long cry of pain 

From the expostulating rail ; 

Or on those gala days 

Which mark the nation's stormy birth, 

Or birth of our great Washington, 

Hears the vauntful, bellowed threats, 

Gigantic, arrogant, joyous crashes 

Of the West Point cannon-thunder 

Up through his heart of many-folded rock 

Leap, thrill on thrill, electric. 

But you may shriek your soul out in his ear. 

You he will never answer. 

Never speak nor whisper, save 

As madman or rapt prophet bowed 

To himself may whisper 

Under the still and solemn cope of night, 

Or when the awful dawn 

Deepens and quivers up the silent east. 

Never, never will he tell you 

In what cradle vast and old, 

With what giant lullabies 

Of tempest, thunder, and volcanic throe 

From the nebular, rudimental fire 

God rocked him to vastness, beauty, form ; 

Or how the steaming lands 

Out of the barren w^aters stood 

With sudden boskage bright, and dense with palms ; 



THE STORM KING. 123 

Nor from wliat deeps of primal ooze, 

Pluvial flats, and quaking fens, 

Eose dinotherium dread and mammoth huge, 

To shake the rainy waste 

With sea-like bellow and slow earthquake tread ; 

Nor from what slimy caves 

Megalosaur and pterodactyl crawled 

To wage loud war along the sailless deeps. 

And tinge the tepid floods 

With spout and splash and hissing swirl of blood 

Of narwhal, serpent huge, and saurian mailed. 

He has watched the tribes of men 
Come and go, — Greece, Egypt, Eome, 
Goth, Eed-man, Hittite, Carthaginian, — 
But not by word or any sign 
Will he tell what world unknown 
(Oh that those grim stone lips might answer me, 
Since lips of angels, men, and gods are dumb ! ) 
Opens its cloudy doors to take 
The trembling or ecstatic ghosts. 
The imponderable, viewless shades 
Of earth's millions, toiling, weeping, passing. 
Till the silent hosts of Hades 
Are more in number than the gray-sea sands. 



AWAKIXG. 

APOWEE words cannot name 
Throiigli branch and root, earth, air, and water thrills, 
Moves in the blood, and like a subtle flame 
Quivers along the hills. 

The world we cannot see, 
The Spirit's world so near, above, around, 
From the glad sky is reaching down to me, 

And upward through the ground. 

From yonder mountain sides, 
From hollows where the drumming partridge springs, 
From beams and winds, into my being slides 

A sense of budding things. 

Along the river-banks 
Slumbrous, expectant, strown with warm gray sands, 
The dog-tooth violet's sharp and crowded ranks 

Thrust up their mottled hands. 



AWAKING. 125 

The loosened brooklet goes 
With many a bubbling fall and pebbly turn 
Through pastures where the trembling wind-flower glows, 

And curls the fronded fern. 

Faint voices reach my ear, 
That steal the world and half its pain away ; 
A^oices that only in the soul we hear, — 

Come, walk the woods to-day. 

That call I hear, and rise ; 
Beneath this roof of murmurous pines T pause ; 
Cool are these shades, a thousand violet-eyes 

Smile from this floor of moss ! 

Eolled from these lofty boughs, 
Moans as of some far organ-pipe I hear ; 
Men in the world's green prime in such a house 

Knelt, thinking God was near. 

Well might they look in awe 
On Him who reared these columns tall and strong. 
Who giveth life, and whose eternal law 

Speaks here in leaves and song. 

Heaven flings one shining door 
Wide open, showers her choicest hues and balms 
On men, bids their work-weary spirits soar. 

And bathe in God's great calms. 



126 AWAKING. 

A mystic warmth, a glow 
Flows with my blood subtler than oldest wine, 
Oh, could I always hear, see, feel as now, 

To live would be divine ! 

Buds burst, brooks sing, flash wings, 
A wind stirs ; to its pinions as they pass, 
From the near hills and farther meadows, clings 

A scent of starting grass. 

O wondrous mystery 
Of life and death ! maze without an end ! 
I feel your breath, your might and splendor see, 

When shall I comprehend ? 



THE STILL, TEEMENDOUS NIGHT. 

^ I HE still, tremendous night takes her lone stand 
^ High on the circle of the world. No star 
Looks from those gulfs of sullen cloud afar ; 

Darkness and silence over all the land, 

And both how deep and dreadful ! One sad bird, 
Ill-omened bird, as if he were alone 
In all the world, pierces with doleful moan 

The solid dark ; no other sound is heard. 



But through the tingling silence on my ear 
Creep many voices, not of men or time 
Or winds or seas, but of that shadowy clime 

Whither all things that help or bind us here 

Descend, borne downward by the mighty Years ; 
The smiles of absent faces light my room ; 
Eyes that have long been dust the heavy gloom 

Put back ; the friend that perished reappears. 



128 THE STILL, TREMENDOUS NIGHT. 

When fails the suu, forth breaks a better light ; 

The day departs, heaven's lilies bend to me ; 

I touch the Irontiers of eternity 
With hands that stretch into the awful night. 
In darkness the invisible world draws nigh ; 

When shadows deepen round me, God, the dead, 

Approach ; I feel a breath ; I hear a tread 
Of feet unseen ; light garments rustle by. 

Oh, this strange leaning towards infinitude ! 
Dread kinship with eternity ! No rest 
Hath time for that mysterious, lonely guest 

The soul, which finds in all earth's round no food 

To quench its divine hunger, but like one 

Exiled and friendless, roves from shore to shore 
In pain and broken-hearted, evermore 

Seeking a home and peace, but finding none. 



A SOLEMN MUSIC FLOWING. 

A SOLEMN music flowing, winding, stealing 
From day's blue gulfs or night's star-sown domain 
Pursues me, as of chimes whose distant pealing 

Flows down the twilight air a golden rain. 
It says, Lo ! in the withered days hehind thee 

Thy life with all its hloom lies dead and cold ; 
All things are taken, fail ; death's frost will hind thee, 
Night wrap the shining mountains fold on fold. 



Then, looking back through mournful eyes, my treasures 

I see strown up and down the faded years ; 
Green hills and valleys arched with stainless azures. 

Dear eyes that death's long severance more endears ; 
The golden autumns, calm, colossal summers. 

The aspirations high, the dazzling dreams. 
The call of birds, the trembling forest murmurs, 

The fragrant airs, the rush of mountain streams. 

9 



130 A SOLEMN MUSIC FLOWING. 

Yonder they lie, — the long-lost Mays, the meadows 

Starry with blossoms, flashing in the dew ; 
The hidden valley, beautiful with shadows 

Whose grateful coolness oft my footsteps drew ; 
The paths that opened upward, beckoning chances 

To do, to conquer, rise to grander heights ; 
Of eyes weighed down by dust, the heavenly glances 

Still following where I go, celestial lights. 

And then another voice more sweet and tender, 

A holier music filling brain and heart, 
Saying, The perished joys, the faded splendor 

Shall to a fairer life around thee start 
Soon as thy feet have crossed that chilly river 

To the great peace that holds the farther side^ 
Leaving the filmy eye, the sick heart's fever, 

The idols broken, and the streams that dried, 

To find among those green and haploy valleys 

Thy dead youth hounding through thy veins again. 
With all of siveet that was, without the chalice 

Of rue, the palsied hand, the labor vain. 
So I my way beneath the shadow groping, 

While the great Night draws nearer, forward go. 
Little believing, sadly seeking, hoping, 

Cheered by that inward Voice, sweet, sweet and lovv 



AT WATCH HILL. 

FOAM and a horror of sound like the noise of the 
muster of thunders, 
And from the white fog-wall the shipwrecking, ravenous 

vastness, 
Swift to the long gray sand-line, crowding each other and 

trampling, 
Swift to the gray, low shore like horsemen rushing to 

battle. 
Glitter below me the helmeted hosts of the shouting 

Atlantic, 
Break on the rocks the angry ranks of the cavernous 

ocean. 

Cries of the merciless seal Ye voices that roll from 

abysses 
Not of the earth or the heavens, prophetic, disconsolate 

voices ! 
Moaning ye seem to say as T listen, millions departed, 
Ye that in sea-gulfs slumber or moulder on desert or 

prairie, 



132 AT WATCH HILL. 

Waiting that terrible surtimons, the blast of the Angel of 

Jddgment, 
Out of the durance of death, his frost and silence, to loose 

you ; 
Ye that like roses unfolding, thick-pearled with the dews 

of the tnorning ; 
Grew, and like roses fell from the arms of mothers 

lamenting ; 
Ye that fall off like leaves in the stillness of shadowy 

forests 
While the hushed valleys lie dreaming in crimson and 

ruby of autumn ; 
Ye that pass out at the portal of carnage, with thunder 

of cannon. 
Waiting a far-away hour when the call of the Angel shall 

rouse you 
Out of a blood-stiffened shroud, the darkness of battle and 

ruin, — 
Will ye, luill ye awake / Is death like life an illusion ? 
Or is the world of the Dead, dark world that we mention 

and tremble, 
Spread around us unseen, but near as the grass and the 

sunshine. 
Not a dream of the Mystic, or phantom of darkness and 

beauty, 
But as the earthquake real, and fixed as the roots of the 

mountains ? 



AT WATCH HILL. 133 

So art thou calling, calling, O sea, as I mournfully listen 
To the white surge that dies on thy bastions of granite 

disastrous. 
As if the dead of ages, the hosts that have passed into 

darkness, 
Hailed me out of the darkness, the kingdom of Night and 

of Silence, 
Called from the sunless sea, the windless, invisible 

Ocean 
That all around us rolls, whirling high its impalpable 

billows, — 
As if that sunless sea through the lips of the tossing 

Atlantic 
Foaming, and fretting the gray sands, called me in audible 

voices. 

Back from the shore I turn through the land, the joyless 

and stunted 
Oaks and high-piled sands, aweary, troubled, and haunted. 
Followed by laughters and wailings sent up from the 

grave of the ages 
As of the millions of millions gone forth through the 

shadowy portal 
Into the shoreless ocean of Night whither all that we 

cherish, 
Love most, fight for, live for, the sweetness of earth and 

the beauty, 



134 AT WATCH HILL. 

Goes and is not, borne down on the sweep of the murmur- 
less River. 
Dews and leaves of the forest and stars of the night, can 

they number 
Those who are sleeping the sleep whose chains no thunder 

can loosen, 
Those whose eyes to us were sweeter than breezes of 

evening 
Blowing from gardens of roses and forests of orange and 

citron ? 
Wearily onward I go, tired, tired of the birds and the 

sunshine, 
Tired of the fields and trees, the light and the rolling of 

ocean, 
Dumbly calling to One who is mighty, a helper in trouble: 
Take me, I cry, from the paio of the lion, remember me, 

take me 
Out of the ivay of the whirlwind, cold, heart-linnger, and 

horror, 
Wrath and the war of tongues, the days that are barren 

and evil ; 
In the clear vjaves of thy ocean of peace bathe, lose me, 

content me. 
Some who were dearer than fall of fountains or roses of 

summer. 
Springtime or morning to me, apart in the silence are 

walking ; 



AT WATCH HILL. 135 

On what island of spice, clear-domed with the starriest 

azure, 
Calm as a sniiset sea washing headlands of gold and of 

amber, — 
Island of God, with glory of jasper and chrysolite girdled, 
Will they await me coming, and hail and remember with 

kisses ? 



10 P^AN. 

LET me go hence as goes 
The good man when he lays him down to die, 
Upon the blazing sands, the frozen snows, 
Closing a weary eye ; 

Leaving the traffic loud 
Above all prayers and psalms, the grave, the knell, 
The fool, of his poor dole of knowledge proud, 

The doubt that is as hell ; 

To see, through filmless eyes, 
Bright forms that walk above all clouds serene ; 
To look on grander mansions, softer skies. 

Hills dressed in richer green ; 

Fountains that ever send 
A music up to soothe world-weary ears ; 
A clime wherein all trouble hath an end, — 

Life separate from tears. 



10 P.EAN. 137 

Farewell, familiar earth ! 
Ye streams and hills, a long and glad farewell ! 
Winds that among the fragrant boughs make mirth, 

Blossoms of rock and dell ! 

Keep thy grand harmonies, 
Keceding Mother ! Joy ! thou growest dim ! 
Take thy dear summers, flowers, and melodies, — 

Give me the cherubim ! 

Like garments from me fall 
This flesh and blood, this ache and weariness ; 
Lights flash, perfumes float by, the angels call ; 

On to their arms I press. 

I am not the stark, cold thing 
Over whose pallid face you heaped the sod, 
I walk, I see ; trees wave and fountains sing ; 

Earth and her fogs — then God. 



T 



THE CAMPING GEOUND. 



HE plains where earth's grand armies camp are 
noiseless ; 



The tents in which at last her mightiest throngs 
Lie down are thick with mould. The halls are voiceless 

That hold the smiting hands and thundering tongues : 
And, all return through thy strong gates denying 

To beggar scorned or king with jewelled head, 
Thou in thy everlasting hush art lying 

All round us, ancient City of the Dead. 



The lips that stung to life the drowsy nations, 

The hand that rocked the tyrant's iron throne. 
Or gave to art its grandest revelations, 

To thee depart, dumb, empty, white, alone. 
The foot that scales the steep ascent to glory, 

The heart whose love is larger than the sea, 
The cheek that shames the rose, the temples hoary, 

All find a rest secure, long, deep, in thee. 



THE CAMPING GROUND, 139 

Ko rival schools, no scorn of classes jealous 

Mar this unbrihed, serene democracy ; 
Not for the flying slave the blood-hound bellows ; 

The jail-door swings, the prisoner is free. 
These empty sockets mock earth's fierce ambitions. 

Its noisy pomp these crumbling skulls deride ; 
Hope's dazzling dreams, power's sensual fruitions, 

What are they here ? AVhere now is human pride ? 



That tongue once cut you like a whetted sabre ; 

Dread not what venom it has left to spill. 
That little heap of dust was once your neighbor, 

Eich, feasted, purse-proud ; ponder and be still. 
Here meet earth's mighty warriors ; not the rattle 

Of drums and wheels, nor cannon's frightful roar, 
Nor heaven-shattering broadside, crash of battle, 

From this enchanted sleep shall wake them more. 



Here meet the hearts renowned in love, whom, parted 

By evil fates, we see through misty eyes ; 
She whom the cloister took, all broken-hearted, 

How restful by her Abelard she lies ! 
Great Camoens, whose life love sealed to sorrow, 

Knows he how near him sleeps his fair Katrine ; 
How thick a dust from these clay chambers narrov/ 

Lies heaped on " sweetest eyes were ever seen " ? 



140 THE CAMPING GROUND. 

The children here, each in its quiet chamber, 

Away from mother's arms sleep, oh, so well ! 
No more to mother's lap the 3'oung feet clamber, 

No kiss to give, no little griefs to tell ! 
Gold-brown and plenteous locks had little Alice, 

Eound Katie's bed we felt the angels stand ; 
Now, no fond message sent from cot or palace 

Would reach them, painless in the Painless Land. 



And little Louis moaned and tossed with fever, 

He went, — a white rose in his baby hand ; 
Hermas passed through the foam-gate of the river. 

From his drenched locks we combed the glistening sand, 
Oh, weeping, weeping ! That dread, dusky Portal 

Eeceived him. Him we not again shall see, 
Nor take his hand in ours, till this frail mortal 

Is lost in that great immortality. 



Yet these tremendous walls shall once be shaken, 

Crumble these gates before a mighty arm, 
Their king fall, by a Stronger overtaken 

At his own threshold, pallid with alarm. 
So taught He while they heard in pious wonder, — 

Those simple fishermen of Galilee, 
Who, in the life that throbbed that coarse garb under, 

Saw Hope's clear star rise o'er humanity. 



THE CAMPING GROUND. 141 

So preach we, so believe we, seeking, groping, 

Along a perilous and rugged way. 
Cast down but not destroyed, despairing, hoping, 

Till we emerge into the promised Day. 
Whoe'er thou art, rejoice ! though pierced and weeping 

For sunken pearls no diver brings to shore ; 
Ambushed by fears, still, still in memory keeping 

Whose feet have passed these awful gates before. 



THE CHRISTIAN ARGUMENT. 

YOUR teachers taught (and you have followed them, 
Holding their faith, shallow and comfortless) 
That Nature's endless round, — her wondrous Book, 
Adorned by God's own hand, and million-leaved, 
The fly, the worm, drawn from their winter sleep, 
The leafless tree breaking to sudden bloom, 
The kernel rising bladed from its grave, 
To man are promise of eternal days. 

Behold this little chrysalis, so dry. 

Lifeless, and dull, fixed to the naked twig, 

All winter shaken by the icy blast. 

You place it where the warming sunbeam bathes 

Its husky covering ; it wakes, it stirs, 

A living thing breaks forth as from a tomb, 

It waves its delicately painted plumes 

And, spreading their gay colors to the sun, 

Floats down the lawn a winged, breathing star. 

And does that frail and gaudy idler sing 
To thee the pleasant song of endless Life ? 
Or that sad, restless thing, the human soul. 



THE CHRISTIAN ARGUMENT. 143 

Whose glance can pierce the dusky past, and cleave 

On tireless wing the gulf of years to come, — 

Seest thou in that a sign to comfort thee. 

That man shall live beyond this grass and snow ? 

The human-visaged ape, the elephant, 

The beaver, ant, and dog have often shamed 

The boasted powers, wisdom, and skill of man, — 

In faithfulness and patience more than he, 

Than he less bloody, cruel, beastly, base. 

Yet Christians hold the noblest brute expires 

Like flame, to wake, to feel, to be no more. 

Hence, then, we draw no comfortable proof 

That man beyond this short, uncertain term 

May pass one step. No intellectual range, 

jSTo flight of that mysterious soul, which seems 

To walk among the stars as one of them, 

No grasp of giant memory, no skill 

From truth's true gold to blow the hollow chaff, 

Nor corn into the furrow dropped that seems 

To die, then pushes up the living blade, 

Nor spring-burst bright, nor shrivelled chrysalis 

Unfolding sudden rainbow wings, makes sure 

That man from deatli's tremendous sleep may wake, 

Or feel or think beyond his dying hour. 

Man dies. The chrysalis was never dead ; 
Its death was only sleep. Show me the worm 
Or fly crushed by the grinding wheel, alive 



144 THE CHRISTIAN ARGUMENT. 

And whole again ; show me the bough once dead, 

Charred by the fire or rotting in its place, 

But now reclothed with leaves and sweet with bloom 

Then will I cry, Behold the 'power of God, 

His voice and true handwriting clear revealed. 

Emblazoned on the air, the groves, the grass, 

Simg hy the winds and echoed hy the waves. 

That man may live beyond these tveeds and fiies ! 

But siglit like this no human eye hath seen. 

So when the swollen hail-cloud breaks on thee, — 

As break it will, — when loss has flung tliee out 

To face the stinging wind and chilly rain, 

Or death has broken into thy small fold 

And borne away the gentlest, whitest lamb, 

Then turn thou not to Nature for a sign 

That in some pleasant land beyond these tears, 

Fast-folded braids, and endless rows of graves, 

Thou will arrive at life that never ends ; 

Seek not in this God's solemn pledge that thou 

On some calm morning, under other skies, 

By sweeter waters, walking greener vales, 

Shalt overtake that troubled guest, thy life, — 

The guest that fled thee at that awful hour 

When wife and child and friend stood round thy bed 

With breaking hearts, and choking sobs and moans, 

To see thy poor tired feet slip down, down, down, 

Into the mould and silence, all alone ; 



THE CHRISTIAN ARGUMENT. 14c 

Nor turn thine ear to opening bud, or worm 

Bursting its wrinkled husk a living thing, 

Nor memory's grasp, nor reason's regal flight 

Through worlds and ages vast, if thou wouldst liear 

That sweet, majestic, strange, Memnonian song 

Heard seldom, but forever rolling on 

And round all things — beneath the rags, the thrones, 

The pomps and charnels of ten thousand years — 

The mystic song of Immortality. 

But rather turn thee to the Heavenly Word ; 

A voice from out those wondrous leaves will steal, 

And press into thy heart and gird thy soul 

Through all that life may give or take away ; 

A fragrance richer than of earthly rose, 

A rarer, more bewildering melody 

Than slumbers in the chords of that wild harp 

Named from the Lord of Winds, or any bird 

That shakes his joy in rain of crystal song 

Down the green robes of June. Thou shalt be clothed 

With strength tenfold, Peace at thy side shall walk. 

And thou shalt go rejoicing on thy way 

Till the white morning takes the leaden East. 

Grant me for truth so much as this. He rose ; 
Then Nature from her forehead smooths the frown, 
From eye and gesture drops the savage threat. 
Fire, earthquake, plague, are but the rhythmic lapse 
In which all flows to some delicious end ; 

10 



146 THE CHRISTIAN ARGUMENT. 

Winds, waves, and death no more a huge machine 

Whose office is to crush, uproot, and grind, 

Then from that ruin fashion and rebuild 

A thousand forms as good and beautiful, 

To fade, to die, to fall to dust in turn : 

Let go that one, then know that all is gone. 

But grant for truth this only, That He rose ; 
Then mystic hoverings as of viewless wings, 
A sound of unseen feet and garments trailed, 
Will chase the horror from my dying room ; 
And all who stand about my bed will see 
A strange light kindle my fast fading eye, — 
A signal that the thread runs on, that death 
Is but a rent in those thin curtain-folds, 
A passage-way through curtains old and worn. 
Which shut us from the fragrance, feasting, joy, 
Youth, music, splendor of a higher room. 



THE END. 



